


Pay Unto Evil

by lord_squiggletits (megatrons_mouth_laser)



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers: Shattered Glass
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alien Biology, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Crushes, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Heavy Angst, M/M, Matrix of Leadership (Transformers), Mental Health Issues, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Moral Dilemmas, Poetry, Post-War, Some Fluff, Tags Contain Spoilers, Torture, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25501672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megatrons_mouth_laser/pseuds/lord_squiggletits
Summary: The Shattered Glass Decepticons cast their Autobots through a trans-universal portal in a desperate bid for survival, causing the original universe Autobots to switch places with their corrupted counterparts.On one side, a fragile peace is built.On the other, the bitter war wages on.
Relationships: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Comments: 70
Kudos: 224





	1. Catalysts

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta readers and all my fellow fans for supporting me through the writing of my first fan fiction.
> 
> Note: This story references specific parts of IDW canon (the pre-war flashbacks from Chaos Theory, certain scenes from Autocracy), but otherwise isn't concerned with being canon-compliant. The civil war hasn't arrived on Earth, and canon Megatron has his MTMTE tank form because I think it looks cool.

Optimus came back online slowly.

His sensory system informed him that he was flat on his back with his wrists in stasis cuffs. A single, sterile light above burned his optics for the half-second it took for them to recalibrate and focus on the bare walls and ceiling.

Then Optimus' memory rebooted, and he rocketed off the slab and onto his feet faster than his combat systems could even confirm that he could still move. He braced to a stop and looked up; mere inches from his optics was a set of titanium bars that thrummed with the telltale hum of live electricity.

A shriek and a clatter sounded from the other side of the bars, and Optimus stared into the wide optics of the purple seeker responsible. He stared back at Optimus, visibly trembling, not even making an effort to pick up his fallen blaster from the ground.

Then he clutched at the comm module on his wrist and shrieked, "He's online! Soundwave,  _ he's online!  _ Backup! Help! Please!"

Optimus raised his cuffed hands in a placating gesture. "Please, soldier, there's no need to panic. I do not wish to harm you."

The seeker only dropped to his knees and fumbled for his blaster-- nearly knocking it through the bars of Optimus' cell before he got a grip on it-- then aimed at Optimus, still shaking. "Don't move!" He cried. "Just...just don't move!"

Clearly, there was no persuading the mech to calm down, though Optimus ached for the other's fear. What in the universe did he think Optimus was going to do to him?

Optimus’ memory logs rebooted and sent him an urgent ping--

_ \--locked face-to-face with Megatron, staring into blazing optics for a split second before the other kicked his foot out from under him. A blur of motion and a painful fritzing of his visual feed as his helm slammed against the ground. Megatron, raising his fusion cannon as the barrel slowly lit up purple… only for an even brighter blue glow to burst into life somewhere behind Optimus. _

_ Megatron flinched, his aim wavering between Optimus and whatever it was he was seeing for only a moment of hesitation. Then he dove to the ground, hauling Optimus up by the broken gaps in his windshields, and then Optimus was blinded by the reflection of light off of Megatron’s bare silver plating and-- _

And then he had awoken in this cell. His systems weren’t sending any warnings of exterior or interior damage. Optimus raised his hands to his chest; even his window panes had been replaced. Physically, he was more-or-less as perfectly rested as he could be after a major battle...except...except--

The Matrix was gone. Its protective casing ached with emptiness, and all of the internal mechanisms of his chest felt tender and raw, as if the locks had been forcibly overridden.

Optimus cycled air heavily through his vents. There was no time to flail about in panic. The Decepticons had the Matrix, yes, but he couldn’t do anything about it until he had a full grasp of his situation.

He looked at the seeker again and paused. Yes, that was the Decepticon badge on his wings, but it was embossed in red instead of purple. And... he recognized this seeker, though not by name; the shape of his helm crests and the pattern on his faceplates was familiar, but his plating should be an almost-white pale blue, not medium-dark purple with black accents.

Optimus turned his back on the terrified guard and searched the walls, ceiling, and corners. After a moment, he found the telltale signs of a hidden camera. He faced it with squared shoulders and a raised chin, then projected his voice to say, "Whoever is watching these cameras-- Soundwave, if you are here-- please send a message to Megatron that I would like to speak to him."

He paused and tilted his head, his sleek audials picking up the quiet sound of his cell guard's continued whimpering. "And...perhaps send a replacement guard as well. I believe my presence is too upsetting for him to perform his duties. I have not harmed him. I have not, nor will I make an attempt at escape before speaking with Megatron." He raised the cuffs, power-lights still glowing, for emphasis.

Optimus carefully avoided facing the bars of the cell again as he sat back down on the recharge slab. He offlined his optics, folded his hands in his lap, and set his churning processor towards anticipating what Megatron's visit might bring.

  
  
  


Some time later, Optimus heard a distant hiss. A rhythmic sequence of clicks and heavy ratcheting noises repeated with increasing volume. It took a moment for Optimus to realize it was the sound of sealed door after sealed door unlocking, opening, and shutting again. Finally, the last door opened somewhere to the left of Optimus' cell, but the bar of light that shined down on the floor was slashed with the dark shadow of a towering mech.

"Sunsplitter, at ease."

The sound of that voice sent Optimus' processor into a momentary glitch. That was Megatron's voice-- but it wasn't-- but it  _ was. _ He had the same deep timbre, the same constant rumble at the edge of his vocalizer, but where Megatron's voice was cold and harsh, this Megatron’s voice was serene and even. He murmured calmly to Sunsplitter for several moments; Optimus tried not to listen too closely out of respect for the poor seeker's frayed nerves, but his tactical processor was demanding every update it could have, and his audials automatically tuned to higher sensitivity in order to hear more clearly.

"Lord Megatron, are you  _ sure  _ I should leave you alone with him? I-- I'm sorry for doing such a bad job, but you can't take this upon yourself alone. Please, let me stay. We still don't know what he might be capable of!"

"It is alright," not-Megatron soothed. "You know that I have held my own against the Prime for millions of years. This situation is far from the most dangerous scenario in which I have confronted him. Wait outside this door, and I will shout if I require your aid."

Metal shuffled against metal. "...Yes, Lord Megatron. I will wait." The seeker's voice trembled in obvious relief. It only took a few seconds for his rapid footsteps to be swallowed behind the noise of the prison door sealing itself closed once again.

Then there was silence but for the deep hum of a massive mechanism's electrical systems and the whoosh of air through vents, long and deliberate.

Even his  _ body _ didn't sound like Megatron's-- the  _ true  _ Megatron's-- and Optimus stood from the slab and strode forward as confidently as he could. He held his head high and waited for the other mech to reveal himself.

The sight of broad wings and large, shoulder-mounted cannons made Optimus’ combat systems leap into high alert instantly, only for the stasis cuffs around his wrists to jolt him with electricity that knocked them offline before they could fully initialize. Optimus grimaced in pain and widened his stance to disguise the brief weakening of his struts.

He focused on the strange Megatron’s face, framed by a helm that was black instead of unpainted silver. His face was no less old, but the lines and scars in the metal seemed like they weighed less heavily on him, somehow, so that there was a faintly youthful cast to it. After a moment, Optimus realized it was because the frown lines around his mouth and optics were far lighter, like shadows at the corners of his face rather than deep carvings.

They stared at each other, blue light glowing against blue light. When Optimus strained his sensors he could just  _ barely _ sense that the wariness in the other's field equalled his own. Buried beneath that was a sense of...curiosity, and tentative hope.

Optimus extended his energy field encouragingly, impressing  _ caution, means-no-harm, confusion? _ as firmly as he could without being forceful.

Megatron's optics dilated slightly. A wave of disequilibrium washed throughout Optimus' combat systems as the other leader met his boldness with... quiet acceptance, as tension visibly eased the frown on his face.

"Hello, Optimus Prime," Megatron said politely. "I believe we both have many questions for each other, though perhaps you more than I. I apologize for the conditions of your imprisonment, as well as the behavior of my soldier, but let me assure you that they were only placed upon you out of extreme caution on our part."

He stepped to the side, tapping something on a control panel Optimus couldn't see, and the cell bars went inert. Another set of taps, and Optimus' stasis cuffs went offline and snapped open.

"Thank you," Optimus said. "Are my Autobots also imprisoned in this facility?"

"Yes," not-Megatron responded. "Their cells are not as...heavily guarded as yours, but they have all been kept in separate cells and given adequate rations. A few of them have attempted to escape, but were successfully subdued with as minimal damage as we could inflict upon them."

"And what of the injured?" Optimus asked. "Before that...light appeared, we were in the middle of a battle, and several of my soldiers were in critical condition."

Not-Megatron smiled, and the expression fit his face as if he had been built with it. "They are being cared for by my medics. All of them are stable."

"I..." Optimus shook his head slowly, then ran a recalibration of his memory banks. A ping moments later confirmed that there were no glitches in his software, nor was there any physical damage or viral influence to his processor. "I believe you, and yet...this shouldn't be possible. This shouldn't be real. How do I know this isn't some sort of...trick? You--" Optimus' voice faltered as his systems flashed misidentification errors tacked onto the edge of the name  _ Megatron _ in his processor. He forced himself to continue, because if he extended his trust too soon, then the lives of all his Autobots could be on the line, and Optimus couldn't allow the fragile light of his hope to bloom in service to a lie. "You've made many plots against us before-- things we all thought weren't possible until you and your scientists set them against us--"

"Your arrival here was not a plot to hurt you." Not-Megatron's face went grave, his voice flat and monotone. "It was an attempt to save  _ our _ lives from the Autobots-- this universe's Autobots."

Optimus sat silently, too stunned to speak.

Megatron raised his left arm-- the one not weighed down by the weight of a large cannon-- and activated a device on his wrist, which cast a holographic display of something that faintly resembled a miniature space bridge. “Our fight against the Autobots was not going well,” he began. “We grew desperate against their assault and decided that if we could not subdue them, we would simply cast them out of this universe entirely. I developed a formula that could allow a modified space bridge to connect to other universes, though only temporarily. It was during this window of time that we successfully cast this universe’s Autobots through the portal. It seems that even if multiversal physics allows two universes to cross over, there must be an equal exchange of matter between them, so at the same moment they left, you arrived.”

“Primus,” Optimus said weakly. He had learned about the theories of multiple universes a lifetime ago in his Academy days, but even so, he had never thought of them as being relevant except as a theoretical exercise.

Trust the Decepticons-- even Decepticons from another universe-- to experiment with such unknown technology, and produce successful results no less.

"I realize that this is a lot to process." Megatron began to pace back and forth across the width of the cell bars. He withdrew a data pad from his subspace and held it up for Optimus' inspection. "Luckily, in the event that our trans-universal portal was successful, I had our archivists produce several copies of this universe's history, with emphasis on the events preceding the Great War through the present, plus some sections on physics, chemistry, and other sciences, just in case your universe's natural laws don't align with ours. Since none of you have spontaneously combusted or malfunctioned in any unusual way, you likely need only concern yourself with the historical section." He stopped pacing and extended the data pad through the bars of the cell. "Please, accept. I know this isn't easy for you, but this is the best start I can give."

Optimus kept his hands clasped resolutely behind his back. “What did you do with the Matrix?”

“It is locked away for everyone’s safety,” Megatron said promptly. His gaze turned hard and faraway. “The Matrix on this side has been responsible for much anguish and death. If you read this, you will understand exactly why, and how.”

"So we are at war in this universe as well." Optimus’ armor felt like its weight had increased tenfold.

" _ We _ were at war with  _ them _ ," Megatron corrected. He walked closer until his chest nearly touched the cell bars, staring intently into Optimus’ optics. "That can change."

Optimus couldn't respond for a moment. "Change?"

"I can already see that you are a noble mech. You asked for the well-being of your soldiers before your own safety. You cared for an enemy soldier even when your own future was unknown. You are a different Prime than I-- we-- have ever known. One who cares for the lives of all Cybertronians. One who could want...peace."

Optimus looked down at Megatron's extended hand-- black, but still visibly begrimed with the slight shine of drying energon. He looked at his armor, the large jets above his shoulders, the entire scarred edifice of his white-and-black chassis. Finally he looked into Megatron's optics again, seeing the hope within them, equally fragile and disbelieving as his own.

If this was a dream, it was a sweeter one than Optimus could have ever imagined.

"Yes," Optimus whispered. "Yes." He reached and clasped Megatron's hand with his own, unable to hide the shakiness of his grip and unable to care one whit. "Let us end this war, and make peace."

~~~

Megatron knelt at Optimus Prime's feet, the light of his spark pouring out across the ground. His chest plates strained around the elaborate metal device keeping them forced open.

"Come now, I know you can do better than that." Optimus twisted his fingers.

Megatron screamed as painstakingly installed wires scraped his spark chamber. He snarled through static, spitting every obscenity and blasphemy and threat his churning processor could queue up, and still this dark-helmed Optimus laughed.

"You are truly a superior mechanism. Yes, much better than the Megatron I know. Not afraid to unleash your hatred, to let it dominate others around you. How marvelous." He crooked one finger imperiously, just lightly enough that Megatron could shuffle forward before the pull of the wires around his spark became painful. "I think I could almost thank him for this lovely turn of events."

Megatron glared up at the Prime, optics ablaze in crackling red, unable to even think of what vengeance he wanted to inflict upon this twisted mech but _ kill, destroy, tear, rip him apart! _

"I am not your  _ plaything _ ," Megatron growled.

"No, not quite," the Prime said, staring down at Megatron's spark and idly playing with the wires. He smiled when the silver mech shuddered, unable to stop the instinctive panic from his essence being threatened. "And I could make you into one. I simply like it more when you can fight me. But...let's say I do tire of you. Displaying your corpse over my throne simply doesn't have enough novelty for a foe as worthy as you, so what would you prefer? Shall I have your sensory subsystem disabled and keep you in a cage as entertainment for my soldiers? Replace your processor with drone programming and have you slaughter your own?" Optimus leaned down, studying Megatron's optics like he was expecting a reaction.

Megatron strained against the multiple cuffs securing his arms behind his back. His systems blared overheating warnings across his HUD, and his vents cycled air so furiously that his frame produced a shrieking symphony of air across metal.

"Perhaps simplicity is best," the dark Prime said, straightening up with audible disappointment in his voice. "I saw that you've had a gun alt-mode in the past. All I need to do is remove your t-cog and wipe your personality module, and you truly would be a tool in my hands to do my bidding. The latter alteration is negotiable, if you beg me hard enough to let you stay sentient. Well?"

_ Just kill me, _ Megatron thought, and the energon in his fuel lines burned in shame and anger and despair. He dropped his helm to stare at the dark navy of Optimus' feet, refusing to answer.

Just as the wires began to tug at his spark chamber once more, the sound of wide doors being slammed open made Optimus' fingers pause. "Well?" He barked.

"Everything is prepared for your message to be sent, Lord Prime." That was Hot Rod, or at least whatever void-damned, slag-riddled version of Hot Rod had arrived in that explosion of light alongside Optimus Prime and his other twisted Autobots.

"Very well." Prime stood from his throne abruptly and strode forward with complete disregard for Megatron’s presence. Megatron howled as he was half-dragged across the floor for several yards before he could scramble to his feet and follow Optimus like the well-trained pet he had become.

_ Temporary captivity will not diminish me,  _ Megatron swore, refusing to let the words ring hollow in the freedom of his own mind.  _ He thinks that inflicting pain is some sort of achievement, as if being able to activate a mechanism's base survival coding is anything but mere stimulation! He does not control my mind-- _

"Stop walking, scum."

Megatron snapped out of his dark thoughts. Revenge fantasies and self-pity were  _ indulgences _ ; he couldn't lose track of his surroundings in the middle of Autobot territory, no matter what  _ kind _ of Autobots they were.

He was standing in the center of a large room that looked like it could’ve been a mess hall at some point, judging by the periodic divots in the floor and the fresh scrape marks revealing untouched metal. The perimeter of the room was crawling with Autobots; their voices grated at Megatron’s audials, and he rolled his optics in disgust at the disorder. Clearly,  _ his  _ Prime had at least one virtue despite his perpetual status as a spear in Megatron’s side.

The new Prime handed off the wires to a black-painted Ironhide, who thrust the barrel of his gun under Megatron’s chin and said sullenly, “Think of tryin’ something and I slag your faceplates off.”

Megatron sneered and didn’t grace him with a response.

“Show him his accommodations,” Optimus ordered. “And make sure he will put on a good show.”

Ironhide grunted and snapped his fingers, and from above a shadowed figure threw down a loop of cord with a hook on the end. The black mech quickly fastened the wires around the hook and then signalled the Autobot above, and the cord quickly began to unwind. Soon the entire length was suspended in the air, and still it grew tighter. Megatron grunted as the wires tensed and relaxed in playful increments, slowly pulling his body upwards until his entire upper half was arched and he had to stand on the tips of his feet to keep his spark chamber from being ripped out.

Megatron kept his face still, his optics half dim in concentration as he composed his expression to be still and cold like a dead mech’s.

“Tough fragger, ain’t he?” That was the voice of one of the Autobot twins, Sunstreaker, who lurked somewhere behind Megatron.

“Yeah...Prime had the right idea saving this guy instead of sending him to the smelting pool,” Sideswipe said in front of him. Judging by the clink of their feet on the floor, the pair were circling him playfully. Megatron couldn’t get a clear visual on them; between the light of his own spark and the pain-induced static over his visual feed, it was an effort to make out anything but shapes and motion.

“We don’t  _ have _ a smelting pool here yet, idiot.”

“You know what I fragging mean,  _ idiot. _ ”

Perhaps he could simply drop to his knees the second Optimus Prime tried to hold him ransom-- with the amount of theatrics around this “message,” it was undoubtedly going to be either a ransom or an execution-- tearing out his own spark and denying that damned wreck the power of forcing a choice. The fools obviously hadn't thought of that outcome; his feet were completely unrestrained, the better for him to try and balance as his body rocked on aching struts.  _ It's not like Starscream would have any protests; this is practically his dream come true. _

How humiliating, to be laid out like this bare and helpless before the entirety of the Autobot army. Megatron ground his teeth. There was simply nothing to do but wait. Pain and humiliation hadn’t killed him up until now, and they would continue to be ineffective in breaking his spirit. The Autobots’ arrogance--  _ Prime’s _ arrogance-- could be exploited somehow, and they could win their petty battle if it meant Megatron won the war.

“Back to your positions!” Optimus snapped, and after a loud crack of metal on metal the twins scampered away immediately. He approached Megatron’s front, looking down his nose at him. "If you and yours are anything like my old Decepticons, they won't be able to help but hear my terms."

Megatron laughed through static. "Do you really think the Decepticon cause can be cowed by the death of one mech? Try turning me into a drone; you would get more use out of my corpse that way." Somehow, the thought of his Decepticons seeing him in this state was like a rush of molten metal across his plating, filling the cracks that had accumulated in the long, long weeks of his captivity. His Decepticons would see him defiant against his captors, bound physically but undefeated in his spark.

Megatron smiled. One way or another, he would be victorious. Now, it was time to wait.

A few minutes later, Hot Rod and Ironhide shouted the rest of the room into silence. Optimus stood in front of and to the side of Megatron, carefully placed so as to not obscure his full frame from the sight of the large holo-screen facing them. Megatron re-balanced his stance moments before it flickered on.

He could barely recognize Starscream’s dark helm and slanted wings, and a navy blue shape behind him that was most definitely Soundwave.

“Well?” Starscream drawled. “I am a very busy mech. Make your demands and stop wasting my time.”

“Starscream,” Optimus said flatly. “I believe I asked this exchange to be  _ public, _ so as to make our standing quite explicit to both sides.”

“Too bad your  _ standing _ here isn’t good enough to warrant our compliance,” Starscream said smugly. “Why don’t you just tell me how much energon you need to keep your troops from running dry, and I’ll decide if I’d like to let you starve instead.”

Optimus folded his arms behind his back. “Auric, the wires.”

And Megatron could neither see nor hear any more through the agony around his spark and the sound of his own screaming.

“I believe I have made myself clear,” came the sound of Optimus’ voice through the haze of white noise as Megatron’s processor finished rebooting. The Prime had one hand on Megatron’s back, holding up his half-inert body so that the wire grip around his spark didn’t become fatal.

Megatron allowed that bit of audacity to stand, focusing all of his system resources towards visual processing. Finally, he could see well enough to make out the faces of his second- and third-in-command.

Starscream’s normally immaculate plating was visibly dented in a few places, spotted with paint that had obviously been hastily added over welding patches; it hadn’t properly blended with the rest of his maroon plating. Behind him, Soundwave was in a similar battered state. A single fine crack ran through the glass on his chest, and he kept shifting his stance, favoring his left knee just slightly.

The two of them turned away from the screen, gesturing heatedly. Starscream’s grating whispers occasionally became loud enough for the call’s audio to pick up, though Megatron couldn’t make out anything besides the furious edge to his voice.

"Alright!" Starscream turned back to the screen. "We will give you what you desire!"

Megatron's mental processes stalled to a halt. Then he laughed so hard that he shook, even as Optimus Prime flared his plating imperiously and the Autobots surrounding him jeered.

“Aw, these Decepticons are kinda soft once you beat them around a little!”

“So much for the might of the Decepticon  _ cause!” _

"What's so funny to you?" Hot Rod said from behind Megatron.

_ Better keep up the act, then, _ Megatron thought as he met Optimus' suspicious backwards glance. He looked up at the screen above and bared his teeth in what could only theoretically be called a smile. "Starscream! Your first command decision without my oversight, and you already prove yourself to be a coward!"

Starscream performed his role perfectly, responding with his trademark scathing voice, “ _ I _ am the one saving your sorry plating after you managed to get yourself captured and put into this state! Consider yourself lucky that I still find you useful,  _ glorious leader!” _

And the Decepticon side of the cut off rudely.

“Very interesting,” Optimus said loudly over the noise of the cheering Autobots. “Perhaps some things remain static between universes. You,” and Megatron’s plating crawled as the other plucked with business-like manner at the wires, “will have to tell me all about how your soldiers function in this universe before we meet them with the ransom. It never hurts to be too prepared.”

Megatron grinned at him through the haze. “You can try.”


	2. Picking Up the Pieces

"That is where the main line of the battle was fought," Megatron said softly as Optimus looked down from one of the Nemesis' many landing bays.

Even for Optimus, so accustomed to carnage that his instinctive reactions of horror and sorrow had become muted, the sight was enough to make his fuel tanks roil. The planet's terrain was already bare, brown, and pockmarked with craters, but it was now splashed with the vestiges of battle like a grotesque artist's canvas: blackened char where fires had long since gone out; metallic glimmers of ammunition shells and torn chunks of metal that once belonged to Cybertronian bodies; splashes and puddles of liquid in lurid yellow-green in patterns that could only be spilled energon. The Ark loomed on the opposite side of the battlefield from the Nemesis. Both shadowed sentinels stood equally apathetic to the millions of years of slaughter they had witnessed.

Megatron touched Optimus' shoulder briefly, then pointed towards the horizon. It took a moment of refocusing his optics to make out the shattered and half-melted arches of metal on a battered platform. "That is the remnant of the trans-universal portal."

"Oh, Primus," Optimus said.

Megatron gave him a sidelong look, but said nothing, only turned his helm back towards the battlefield. He clasped his hands in front of him and braced himself straighter, a counterpart to his energy field, which hung like a cloud of sorrow and resignation.

Optimus kept looking at Megatron right on, because every time he looked away even for a moment, his visual processing kept glitching, turning blue optics to red. "That portal...took everything you had, didn't it?"

Megatron nodded.

Optimus felt terrible, but he had to know-- it wasn't just his future at stake, here. "If we were to help you gather resources and rebuild the portal, would you be able to send us back?"

Something in the way the other exhaled deeply through his vents-- the same way he had just before approaching Optimus in his cell-- told him the answer even before Megatron met his optics, his gaze reserved and careful. "Mathematically speaking, there are a practically infinite number of universes, any one of which we could have sent the Autobots into and accidentally brought you out from. Yes, given time to re-gather our strength and find more resources, we could rebuild the portal and send you through. However, there would be no way for us to guarantee that we would send you back to your own universe. We would likely only send you into a third universe-- and bring that universe’s Autobots here during a time when we would still be struggling on the edge of survival."

Optimus looked back out at the scarred battlefield, turning so that he couldn't see Megatron from his peripheral vision at all. "Your plan could have brought Autobots from a universe even more hostile than your own, yet you followed through regardless."

"It was a calculated risk." For the first time, an undercurrent of steel ran through Megatron's soft voice. "I calibrated the portal to connect to any universe whose Cybertron would be compatible with our own. There is a social formula that I developed a long time ago that…” He trailed off, then continued more firmly. “To put it simply, the portal’s parameters were set to connect to a limited number of universes that had progressed in such a way that whoever was on the other side would be able to handle the encroaching threat of our Autobots."

"Those universes could have been at peace."

"Then they would have been more prepared to fight a war than we are!" The furor in Megatron's voice struck a chord in Optimus' audials that buzzed all the way to his combat systems, and he whirled. Megatron's blazing optics, his bared teeth, the implacable fire in his words-- all achingly familiar as the other thrust a hand out at the wreckage below. " _This_ is not a price I can weigh the lives of my Decepticons upon! I know-- I _know_ that every life has value! But I was forced to choose who to save, and I chose to save my people. The price would be paid one way or another, and I am sorry that you are the ones who have paid it-- but can you truly not understand why we would make such a decision, now that you have seen the evidence with your own optics?"

Before Optimus could begin to formulate a thought out of his churning processor, Megatron stepped closer. Those blue optics froze Optimus in place as the other advanced closer, all his systems humming with elevated electricity. "It could have been a universe at peace, you said. Yet you told me that your universe was also embroiled in war. Is coming to this universe, where we can both finally have the peace we desire, truly such a curse for you and your people?"

It was simply too much to take in. Optimus’ own systems were roaring, cooling fans working on maximum and all his limbs thrumming with electricity in preparation for a fight they were still convinced was about to happen. One minute he was in one universe, and the next he was here. There had been no choice, no fighting it. It had simply happened to them with all the implacability of a natural disaster. “We didn’t choose this,” he whispered.

Megatron finally averted his eyes. He took several steps back, and the mechanisms of his wings clicked audibly as they settled back down. "Please forgive me. I have been calculating all of the possible outcomes of this for so long, I forgot that you have had far less time to take all of this in. If..." Megatron hesitated, the reluctance and longing in his expression visibly battling with his words. "If you do not forgive me for this-- if you would rather not associate with us, then I will let you and your Autobots leave without stopping you. You can forge your own path here, if that is what you wish."

What was there for Optimus to cling to? His old home was gone, as surely beyond his grasp as the sparks of every dead soldier in the war. While he was turned towards the past, towards grieving, towards longing for something he could not have, living mechs were suffering and in need of help that he could give. Hope that he could give.

Like always, there was nothing he could do but move forward.

Optimus dimmed his optics and tilted his helm back. "I can't tell you that I feel...right about this situation yet. And I can't promise you that my Autobots will accept your word as easily as I have." He breathed, in and out. "But I want peace, and I would rather work with you than apart from you."

Optimus extended his hand first, and Megatron took it. Their grip went on without pause, Megatron studying his optics intently, and for the first time Optimus wondered if the other was seeing echoes of his own Optimus Prime in his image.

And if that Optimus Prime was now in his old universe, then the Decepticons would--

Megatron's grip loosened, and Optimus belatedly let go. He aborted that train of thought before it could progress any further. _Focus on the present, Optimus._

"I understand now," Optimus said at last. He turned back towards Megatron. "I would like to see my Autobots, please. If any of them still have doubts, they will come around when I give them my word."

Megatron looked into the middle distance as the comm lights on his chest flashed briefly. "Your troops will be brought out from their cells," he said. "Let us not keep them waiting."

With both of them walking side by side through the hallways, Optimus was hard-pressed to keep himself from accidentally brushing against Megatron’s wings. He kept his EM field carefully reserved, still too uncertain of his own feelings to be sharing them with others, especially with the impending reunion with his Autobots coming closer with every step.

The hallways were completely deserted, and Optimus soon found out why; a large set of doors retracted into the walls to reveal a large hangar that had been completely cleared of weaponry, equipment, and the other trappings of battle to make room for a huge mass of soldiers. Despite the size of the gathering, no one spoke; the silence was so complete that Optimus could hear individual clinks of shifting armor, and every EM field was so tense that it could be cut through with a blade.

There were two clear groups that had been made; one group stood in a wide ring concentrated around the perimeter of the room, with only a few daring mechs edging closer to the second group, which huddled in a defensive mass at the very center of the hangar.

All of them turned to meet Optimus and Megatron as they entered. Optimus had a brief moment of mental vertigo at so many red-branded mechs hailing him so eagerly before he recognized the angular points of the Decepticon brand. It didn’t help that for every mech staring and saluting with adoration at Megatron, there was another one devouring the sight of Optimus with excited-fearful optics. The tension in the room rippled like an ocean, and he and Megatron were the ships cutting through the water.

“Autobots,” Optimus called.

A sea of blue optics locked onto him in unison, and then the mass broke. Dozens of mechs streaming towards Optimus at once, all shouting at once and trying to be the first to reach him.

"Prime, you're alright!" Ironhide called.

"Did _he_ do anything to you?" Bumblebee demanded, trying to jostle his way through the much taller 'bots around him.

More voices called out in a loud buzz of concern that hushed as soon as he raised his hands.

"Autobots," he said sonorously, "While this situation may have had an alarming start, let me first assure you that I am unharmed, and that we are all safe in the company of these Decepticons." Optimus didn't let his voice waver, even as he saw his soldiers’ faces open in surprise or tense in lingering suspicion. He could feel Megatron's optics against his back while he kept his focus on his soldiers. "Have any of you been debriefed on the trans-universal portal that brought us here?"

A wave of murmurs rose in assent. Prowl stepped out of the mass of soldiers and saluted Optimus, then said briskly, "I, the rest of High Command, and most of the other Autobots have been informed of the situation. I reviewed the evidence presented to me and found it credible."

"And I as well," Optimus said, grateful when the Autobots visibly relaxed from bristling wariness to the more calm, restrained energy of a formal debriefing. He stepped to the side so that they could see Megatron and gave the Decepticon lord a respectful nod.

“I have talked with Megatron about the incident that brought us here. I would like to begin by telling you the hardest news first: we cannot go back to our original universe. This is now our new home.”

Silence, as the information sank in slowly. Many of the Autobots looked blank, as if they hadn’t heard him properly, and a few even looked at Optimus with the nervous disbelief of some unexpected joke. Others’ faces fell, or they looked around at their companions to try to gauge how to respond.

Before their negative reactions could bloom further, Optimus continued with conviction, "We are in a new universe, Autobots. It is easy to succumb to hatred and fear in a time of uncertainty, especially when confronted by people who look so similar to our familiar foes. However... the Decepticons here have treated us with as much respect and care as they could, even though they were unsure of our peaceful intentions towards them. In the coming days, please treat them like new allies, not old enemies."

Optimus paused for a moment to let them take in his words, then turned towards Megatron and extended his hand. "Neither one of our factions has any ill will towards the other. On this day, I would like to clean the slate and begin a new era."

Megatron's wings went rigid for a moment, but immediately relaxed. He smiled and stepped forward to clasp Optimus' hand in a strong grip.

"Whatever the future holds, today peace begins. Today, all have become one."

  
  
  


After many, many questions, the Autobots finally accepted Optimus’ words. Millions of years of reflex couldn't be overcome in less than a day, however. Some of the more friendly Decepticons tried to approach for conversation, but the Autobots stayed in their tight huddles and stared out harshly enough that the Decepticons steered clear.

“These are all of my able-bodied soldiers,” Megatron said when Optimus approached him. “All of the others are in the medbay. I thought it would be prudent to introduce our soldiers in a neutral context immediately.”

“How many casualties are there?” The suddenness of Ratchet’s gruff voice made Optimus jump slightly; the old medic had approached them boldly, and it was clear by the frown on his face and the wrench already twirling in his hands that he had zero intentions of letting anything, even a sudden leap between universes, stand between him and his job.

Ratchet’s frown deepened to a scowl when Megatron told him the numbers. “Alright, you lot could use all the help you can get. Prime, can you clear me and the other medics to go?”

“Gladly,” Optimus said, then belatedly looked to Megatron for confirmation.

He was stunned at the sight of the black-and-white mech’s sudden bright smile. “Of course.”

It didn’t take long for Ratchet to badger the Autobot medics out of their huddles; within a minute he had herded them all up and away towards the medbay, directed by a helpful Decepticon.

In the meantime, Optimus began to read the datapad Megatron provided, and his Autobots were also passed copies by the surrounding Decepticons-- several of whom bore grimacing expressions as they did so. It didn’t take long for the tentative quiet was broken by frequent exclamations of horror and confusion.

Optimus shared the feeling. He understood perfectly well now why the Decepticons here had considered a trans-universal portal to be worth the risk. The facts told the story more clearly than even the wreckage of the battlefield could.

Megatron and his Decepticons were brutal in their way, of course, but Optimus knew Megatron had had a noble beginning with just purposes. Even after he strayed from his path, his tactics were deliberately calculated, avoiding a certain amount of destruction for pragmatic reasons if nothing else-- not this...sadism, or destruction for the sake of amusement, or power plays, or...really, it was hard to tell why this universe's Optimus Prime had done anything, because not even the carefully compiled intelligence reports that had been specially supplied to his datapad could offer a solid motivation behind his acts.

It didn't take long for the Autobots to become restless, stalling in a miasma of depression or agitation or both at once depending on the individual. Optimus moved from group to group offering what calm he could, but for once his words didn’t have any lasting effect.

“This stuff makes me feel sick,” Bumblebee moaned with his head in his hands.

“Really sick,” Sunstreaker added from where he leaned against Sideswipe.

A few minutes later in the next group, Jazz discretely sidled up to Optimus and murmured, “Dunno about you, but I’m starting to feel more than just _emotionally_ disgusted, and so’s everyone else.”

First one, then three; a dozen, then more and more Autobots complained of sickness in their fuel tanks. Optimus...had noticed a slight increase in his internal core temperature, but dismissed it offhand as a sign of stress. But once the Autobots identified the pattern, fear engulfed them like flame on spilled oil.

“They poisoned us!” Someone shouted from within the mass. All at once Autobots everywhere were lurching to their feet, integrated armaments transforming out of limbs, energy weapons igniting. The Decepticons were a mere instant behind in raising their own weapons; many were wide-opticked in panic, but the vast majority looked grim and resigned.

“Stop!” Optimus roared, just as Megatron jumped between the two groups and shouted, “Don’t!”

“Weapons down, _now.”_ Optimus said in the ensuing silence. _“Now!”_

A pause. The Autobots obeyed. Even a few Decepticons lowered their weapons for an instant before belatedly looking towards their own commander, who echoed Optimus’ order.

“Okay,” Optimus said slowly, arms still outstretched, slowly turning his head towards Megatron. “I’m sure there is an explanation for what’s happening to us?”

Megatron’s unease was betrayed by the tightness around his optics in his otherwise still face. “I can assure you that your rations came from the exact same energon supplies that we drink from.”

Several Decepticons murmured low in agreement. “Lord Megatron would never betray our allies in such a way…”

“We don’t lie like that!”

“How could you say such a thing?” Some of the Decepticons were definitely starting to sound resentful; Optimus saw a few trigger fingers twitching and multiple sets of feet still braced in fighting stances.

Optimus jolted when a comm alert came on his HUD. Unnecessarily, he pressed a finger to his helm and answered aloud, “Ratchet?”

“Prime, there’s a situation going on. A lot of our ‘Bots are having serious issues with--”

“Fuel tank sickness?”

“Yeah. I’ve had one of our energon specialists take a look at the energon here; she identified a different chemical composition in it--different balance of minerals as well. It’s not lethal at all, but it’s in the realm of barely editable for any mech from our universe.”

“How long should we expect to experience symptoms of illness?”

“Depends. Everyone can burn the fuel out of their tanks in two hours if they keep their engines manually in high gear, but that leaves us still needing energon that won’t make us sick just by drinking it. Penumbra is still working on a way to refine the Decepticons’ energon into something we can drink, but for immediate rations, we need to refine our own energon from raw materials.”

“Understood. I will arrange the operation shortly.” Optimus cut the line and looked to his Autobots, then repeated Ratchet’s instructions in brief. “Every mech contributes to energon foraging today. Megatron, can you provide information on any natural sources of energy on this planet?”

And from then on, Optimus’ day became a flurry of surveying maps, driving out to coordinates, and helping haul raw fuel from the hastily established mining camps back to the Nemesis for refining. He even had to down several more cubes of the yellow-green energon due to the amount of energy he was expending from so much labor; however, he bore the nausea and slight disequilibrium stoically, and after a few scattered bouts of complaints, the Autobots followed him in composure.

The repetitive grind of manual labor and arranging logistics was almost...mundane. He spent so much time surrounded by his Autobots that it was almost as if nothing had changed at all. Optimus didn’t stop hauling until every refinery on the Nemesis had enough material to be refining energon for the next several hours, and even then he nearly decided to go on one more trip anyways before a black-plated hand caught his shoulder.

“You’ve had a long day.” Megatron offered a cube of blessedly pink energon, his optics alight in concern. “There will be plenty of energon for your soldiers tonight. Please, rest.”

“You’ve had a long day, too.”

“Not so long as yours. You were unconscious for almost a day after you arrived. I’ve had time to rest; you haven’t.”

Optimus finally took the cube from Megatron with a mumbled thanks. He was still standing in one of the hallways closest to the exit, and the nearest mess hall was a few minutes’ walk away, so he simply decided to sit against the wall of the hallway and drink. After a moment, Megatron joined him.

The energon tasted so good to Optimus’ exhausted systems that it was almost sweet, and all of his sensors lit up cheerfully at the sudden influx of clean, healthy energy. He expected Megatron to say something, but the other mech only gave him idle glances in between sipping his own cube. Even Optimus’ combat systems remained inactive, having apparently decided that a mech he could comfortably accept energon from wasn’t necessary to treat as a potential threat.

The silence was comfortable, and Optimus was content to linger in the moment, savoring the feeling of physical satisfaction and emotional pleasure from a hard day’s work done well.

At last he finished his cube and stood. “I’m going to check on my soldiers again. And then settle down for the cycle.”

“Of course,” Megatron replied, also standing.

They both stared at each other without moving. Optimus felt like he should say something else, something less businesslike and impersonal, but what? It seemed slightly rude to leave Megatron just like that, but he had no reason to linger, and...well, Megatron had said it was okay…

Optimus stepped to the side at exactly the same moment Megatron moved the same way to walk in the opposite direction, putting them directly in each other’s paths again. He reflexively sidestepped the other way, only to bump chest-to-chest against Megatron as he did the exact same thing.

Optimus held optic contact with Megatron for several awkward seconds, then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, you move first.”

Megatron laughed. “Rest well, Prime.”

Optimus felt the brush of air as the other moved past him-- there was the larger movement of air from his body, followed by a more narrow current from his wings-- and only then did he begin walking towards the hangar again. _This must be reality. A dream wouldn’t be so ridiculous._

Of course, he had entertained thoughts of what it would be like to share energon with Megatron-- _his_ Megatron-- in the past, but… if the possibility had been remote before, it was impossible now.

He brushed aside the whispering tendrils of old dreams and kept walking.

  
  
  


The next task was to reclaim the Ark so that the Autobots could add their own resources to those of the Decepticons, which would increase efficiency and allow them to return to Cybertron much sooner. Having independent space would also hopefully reduce the tension between the two forces; despite the officially declared ceasefire, the number of instances where soldiers from either faction almost came to blows over misunderstandings, frayed nerves, or pure reflex was discouraging.

Unfortunately, the Ark's defenses were very much online, proved by a brief expedition by Cliffjumper and Hound that nearly led to them being blasted into scrap by the hull-mounted guns. The warship didn’t recognize the security credentials of any of the Autobots. It took Wheeljack, Perceptor, and the rest of the science team several days to find a way to disable the exterior weapons systems by overriding the security system from a distance. Everyone else was left to either help in the medbay or in the field mining, hauling, and refining materials for energon. It wasn’t just the Autobots, either; the Decepticons’ supplies were running low, so their work forces wandered the planet just as extensively as the Autobots did. Slowly, the two sides began to mingle during both active and rest cycles.

Throughout it all, Megatron was almost constantly by Optimus' side, quick to enforce Optimus' orders with his own and offer explanations where the Autobots' knowledge was limited.

Sometimes, Megatron would casually appear practically out of nowhere to ask Optimus a question or give a report. The several times that happened, the sound of his voice alone was enough to have Optimus whirl with his blaster pointed directly in Megatron’s face before he could even think to stop himself. Optimus apologized profusely every time, but Megatron took the awkwardness with surprising good humor.

"You haven't pulled the trigger on me yet," Megatron said one time with a grin. "It's a good thing I never had to face _you_ in combat with reflexes like that, eh?"

It was extremely difficult to hide anything from Megatron's notice-- those blue optics were no less keen despite their constant serenity and open trust-- and Optimus couldn't always excuse himself by assigning himself field duty. Megatron seemed determined to talk to him at every spare moment they had to discuss logistics, or more often to simply talk for the sake of it. It wasn't like Optimus could turn him away when the state of their alliance was still so fragile...and he wasn't exactly sure why he felt the need to avoid Megatron, himself.

As a result, on the day Wheeljack finally broke through the Ark's security system, Optimus immediately rolled out with a team of his most trusted (and least easily-perturbed) mechs to begin the work of reclaiming their flagship.

It was not comforting.

"This is fragged up," Ratchet muttered from his side of comms. "An absolute... _fragging_ disgrace. Who the hell does something like this? He called himself a medic?" A static-muffled clatter sounded in the background. The anger in Ratchet's manner was clear, but Optimus knew him well enough to sense the slight tremor buried beneath his steel.

"I...relate to the feeling, Ratchet." Optimus stood with his hands clasped behind his back, surveying the long hallway lined with bodies suspended in sickly, glowing tubes of liquid.

"Maybe I uh, should'a gone back when you told me to, Prime," Ironhide said weakly from behind him.

"It is your choice either way." Optimus stepped down the long rows, looking at each body despite the small voice in the back of his processor that urged him not to. Each corpse bore the Decepticon insignia somewhere on its body, and even if Optimus was familiar with individual Decepticon soldiers, many of the bodies were so mangled that he couldn't even tell what their alt-modes might have been in life.

This was his counterpart's doing. The history datapad Megatron provided had gone into great detail on the...proclivities of this universe's Optimus Prime. Optimus couldn't help but feel responsible for this in some way. He would never, _ever_ do such things, but... he had been reading into theories of parallel universes in his free time, and many scientists believed that there had to be some sort of commonality between multiple iterations of the same entity, even if that commonality was very small...

With no one to witness his private thoughts, the weight of Optimus' many mistakes loomed large: times he had lost his temper, times he had looked the other way on some minor incident of vengefulness or bigotry on the part of his Autobots, times he had rationalized away the qualms of his spark before authorizing a particularly underhanded operation. His visual feed went unfocused, and for a moment the crushing weight of guilt and loneliness pressed in on him like _he_ was suspended in one of those tubes, torn open and laid bare with his darkest secrets spilling out like drops of oil...

"Prime? Prime!"

"Ah-- yes, Ironhide?" Optimus shook himself and turned back towards his companion. A slip that bad was unusual for him; this change to another universe had truly taken him off his guard.

Ironhide's opics glowed with sympathy, and he clasped Optimus' arm. "It's not your fault, okay? I know that look in your optics." He waited until Optimus focused on his faceplates, then added softly, "Things are gonna get better now that we're here. We can fix this. The war is finally over."

"Yes, I--" Optimus sagged briefly, passing a hand over his mask. "Thank you. I just don't think I've ever seen anything so unnecessarily cruel, even from our Decepticons."

Ironhide made a low noise of disgust, engine rumbling. "I don't like giving 'em any credit, but you just might be right about that.” He gestured towards the bodies. “What do we do with them?"

Optimus activated his comms. "Megatron, do you read me?"

"Yes, Prime. What do you need?"

"I've found the bodies of several Decepticon soldiers aboard the Ark. We're about to remove them from their current locations so that they can be returned to you for burial. Can you send a crew for pick-up?"

It only took half a minute for Megatron to reply, "I've just sent a team. Arrival in roughly thirty minutes."

Optimus suspended their private line, but left open his general comms so that he could hear the periodic reports of his Autobots as they scouted the length and breadth of the Ark. Judging by their reactions, the rest of the ship was in a similar state of chaos and depravity. It would probably take weeks just to clean everything out thoroughly enough to be livable, and months more to repair the Ark into being space-worthy. True, this universe's Autobots and Decepticons had been in the middle of a battle before the trans-universal portal was activated, but that only accounted for the damage to the hull and engines. The inside of the ship was a completely different story-- some of the modifications were so bizarre and impractical that it was a wonder its crew had been able to accomplish anything.

But... any progress they made was no longer made merely to halt the Decepticons, or stave off their own deaths from lack of energy. Now, there was peace, and every hand on both sides was turned towards one goal: returning to Cybertron to rebuild their society.

Their society. _Their_ society. Optimus tried with all his spark to believe that could be true, even as he began the work of cleaning the twisted replica of a war machine that didn’t quite belong to any of them.


	3. Dance with the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter this time, about twice as long as the last two.
> 
> Also, class started this week so the frequency with which I will be able to write is questionable. Know that this fic is planned to be about 10 chapters long: eight chapters of story, and two epilogue chapters.

"This is a quaint little place," the Prime said as he looked across the datapad shelves in front of him. The metal around his optics crinkled in an invisible smile; Megatron vividly imagined caving it into his helm. "What an unexpected place to find a few gems of nostalgia; but this is my own alternate self's room, so that is reason enough."

Megatron’s spark pulsed pain through his entire body every second, particularly in the remnants of his shoulder sockets. After the ransom message to his Decepticons had completed, the dark Prime had had his own version of Ratchet step forward and remove both of Megatron's arms--  _ while he was still strung up by his spark _ . He of course hadn't been provided anesthesia. Instead, he was the evening entertainment for all of the Autobots, who booed and taunted him when he gritted his teeth and remained silent. When the pain and indignity overpowered Megatron's discipline and made him start screaming threats, the Autobots cheered and loudly began critiquing his insults and suggesting more creative ones.

Strung up for the entertainment of others who were so arrogantly certain that they could enjoy themselves harmlessly on the suffering of another. Which they had.

Memories which had long ago solidified into cold steel resurfaced again, boiling hot. It was like the arena. Only this time, Megatron hadn't even been able to fight back.

"Yes, that's it." The Prime had abandoned his perusal of the shelves to come kneel next to Megatron, appraising the snarl carved into his face. "Perfect. Your fire won't go out for a million years or more."

"It won't take that long for me to end you," Megatron snapped. "We'll see how much you enjoy the flames when you’re cast into them!"

Prime only smiled even more. Megatron's spark throbbed with animalistic instinct as he looked into those red optics, soft in condescending amusement and yet cold, completely cold and fathomless below the surface. There was something  _ wrong  _ with this mech. It wasn't merely the mania of the insane or sadistic-- Megatron had seen plenty of  _ that  _ in his lifetime. That was the type of mental affliction that got most mechs killed when they inevitably became reckless and stupid, succumbing to their desires instead of following an objective.

No, this was something beyond that. The longer he stared into the other's optics, he could see that it was...boredom. The Prime spoke eagerly of Megatron's fire at the same time he was already tired of it, like their entire story was already written and he had read it forwards and backwards multiple times, content to watch benevolently as Megatron experienced it himself, blind, for the first time. Like he was some kind of newbuild, too freshly sparked to understand the world and bumbling around until someone else stepped in to ever-so-kindly show him--

Well, this Prime could see where his arrogance would take him. The more certain a mech was, the more easily he was blinded to his own flaws.

"You have a lively ember," the black-and-purple mech told him conversationally, reaching out and brushing Megatron's spark chamber with a finger. "It's very rewarding to try to parse what kind of mechanism you are based on this alone."

The touch of a finger was far less painful than the wires from earlier, but it was infinitely more violating. Megatron twisted his torso away, unable to do anything but break the contact when his legs were magnetized to the floor from the knees down.

"It would be easier to gain the information I require through hardlining, but alas, we don't quite have the resources to build the proper program for that. Conversation will have to do."

_ Let him talk, _ Megatron thought.  _ And if surrendering some insignificant fragment of data will placate him into revealing more about himself, so be it.  _ He let his lips relax into a frown.

"So tell me, what is your Optimus Prime like?"

"An idealistic fool," Megatron immediately offered, his words coming out with venom redirected from his captor onto the one no longer present. "Beloved by his people because he offers empty comforts to them about ideals, love, and justice even as he sends them to slaughter and be slaughtered by us."

Prime actually tipped his head back and roared with laughter, holding up one finger. "Oh, don't tell me anything else. I've already heard this story before. He fights for peace in the galaxy, and wants nothing more than the war to be over so he can build his own idyllic society. He's willing to do what must be done-- meaning kill, destroy, lie, and pillage-- as long as he calculates that the 'good' outbalances the 'evil' in the equation. And he keeps throwing himself in your way again and again hoping to defeat you, no matter the cost to himself. I'm correct, aren't I?"

Megatron thought the limits of his disgust had been reached, but the sound of this mech's mirth pushed him even beyond that. Somehow, the fact that he  _ agreed  _ with the other's assessment made him feel disgusted, as if it was a personal insult that someone he hated happened to share the same observations. He didn’t give a damn about what one Optimus Prime thought of another version of himself. It was simply insulting to have another mech so brazenly usurp the place of a respectable rival-- idiotic and foolish, but respectable.

This situation could even be considered  _ personally _ fortunate for Megatron; he didn’t need to know this Prime any more to comprehend the depths of his disgustingness. Unlike his own Optimus, he wouldn’t have any regrets about killing  _ this _ one.

The Prime's laughter quickly subsided, the brief warmth falling away from his voice as swiftly as a plunge into liquid nitrogen. "It seems you have benefited equally from this arrangement, old adversary," he murmured to himself. "One fool seldom differs from another. May you enjoy your peace together-- while it lasts."

He recovered himself and looked back at Megatron. "Ah, but it is sometimes too tempting to indulge in old grievances. Forgive me for asking for something so superfluous."

Megatron only quirked an optic ridge up at him. "Get on with your business, then." He was already beginning to find shards of usable information here; let the mech continue digging his own unknowing grave.

Optimus reached into his subspace and pulled out a coil of wires. Every mechanism in Megatron’s body coiled up, and every motor relay lurched into higher gear.

"Easy," The Prime laughed. "I can use my hands, if that's what you would prefer."

"No."

"Pain it is, then." He dropped to one knee and held one end of the wire, extending it towards Megatron's exposed spark chamber--

Megatron twisted his torso and lurched forward. He set the burning rate of his fuel tank to maximum, generating as much power as he could to his exposed shoulder socket as he jammed it against the Prime's chest.

He was rewarded with a shout of pain, the first break in the Prime's composure he had had the pleasure of causing. Optimus jerked backwards, and Megatron continued his forward momentum to catch the wire coil in his teeth and jerk it out of the Prime's loosened grip.

The atmosphere roiled with their clashing energy fields. Optimus' combat systems were roaring with power, almost overpowering the injured screech of Megatron’s own damaged frame.

Megatron narrowed his optics. Then he ground down, hard, until the wires were a frayed mess between his teeth, and spat them onto the floor in front of his captor.

"...My mistake, Megatron." The Prime straightened from his crouch, systems subsiding to a low hum. "It is always good to be reminded not to savor victory too soon."

Oh, but he already loathed this Optimus and his penchant for grandstanding. "You presume too much," he growled.

The Prime didn't respond, only continued looking at him thoughtfully for a minute before speaking again. "It almost seems a waste to ransom you away." He had one hand over his chest, resting not on the scorched plating where Megatron had electrocuted him, but on the seam in the middle of his chest.

Megatron's plating crawled with unease. "Supplying an army is more important than satisfying personal pleasures," he said, affecting indifference. He had heard some of the Autobots complaining of half-empty energon storages and fuel that burned too fast in lulls between Ratchet's torture.

"Indeed," Optimus sighed and lowered his hand. "And allowing you to leave is a wiser investment for the future."

Megatron stared at him incredulously. He wasn't about to give an enemy  _ advice  _ on how to properly take advantage of a hostage situation, but was Prime really planning on just letting him go?

Optimus detected it immediately, smiling and letting his energy field cover Megatron's in a wave of amusement. "How did you put it... The death of one mech won't stop the Decepticon cause? And as I said, your fire is worth more burning than it is extinguished."

"Why do you fight this war?" Megatron demanded. It was the sort of question his own Optimus had asked of him before, and which he had returned in kind. One of their tests for each other.

_ "To protect the innocent from you," _ His Prime would’ve said. 

But the new Optimus Prime said, "What better reminder is there that we are all still alive than war? What better way to test who has enough fire to deserve their life?"

Megatron gave him a twisted smile. "One might assume that me being captured by you would be a sign that I have lost my worthiness to live." This Prime was only marginally correct;  _ deserving  _ had nothing to do with who lived or died. He had been captured merely because he and the Decepticons had been surprised by a completely random, unpredictable twist of fate. If this Prime was any indication of the twisted universe he had come from, Optimus Prime and his Autobots were suffering an equally hostile war despite all their lauded heroism.

The universe was indifferent to life; it snuffed out the strong and virtuous at the same time it spared the weak and cowardly, or the opposite. The only thing one could count on was their own will.

"Ah, but you haven't given up the fight yet. All the torture and humiliation I've inflicted on you has done nothing to your resolve." The Prime smiled at him with chilling warmth. "Rest assured that I won't deign to kill you until the day you finally burn out and have to ask to have your life spared." 

_ So that's how it is. _ Megatron looked into red optics and saw a twisted mirror. There was no compromise with another who understood the truth of the universe. There was only conquest-- who could snuff out the other first. It seemed that this Prime was perfectly willing to draw things out and dither as long as Megatron remained alive as... amusement, to keep him from getting bored. If Prime was holding strength in reserve, it would be unleashed if Megatron were to ever fall.

But perhaps the same applied in reverse. Megatron hadn't been able to fully examine the character of the twisted Autobots, but one thing was certain: Optimus Prime was the linchpin holding the entire thing together. If he were to fall, then the Autobots could be easily routed in the resulting power vaccuum. It certainly wasn't loyalty or virtue that kept his mechs loyal to him, that much was certain.

Of course, Optimus Prime had always been difficult to kill, but that was a plan he could begin to enact later. The new Autobots had been set back by the necessity of reclaiming the ship's resources... if the rest of their army was elsewhere in the galaxy, surely they would be suffering the same difficulty. He and his Decepticons had the advantage of home territory, and Prime was a fool if he thought he could afford to toy around at such a disadvantage.

"In that case," Megatron said coolly, "I hope your Autobots share your enthusiasm for being scrapped and smelted down to the last mech." 

Optimus’ optics flashed. “The Autobots belong to me. They follow me and give their bodies as I see fit.”

He stood and walked out of the room, pausing before he left. “Perhaps one day, you will be cowed into joining them.”

  
  
  


The terrain of this uninhabited planet was heavily forested. In other words, it was terrible for close-quarters-combat, half-impossible to conduct stealth operations within, and annoying to clean out of one's components during maintenance. The Decepticons had quickly remedied that by carpet-bombing the area of operations into a semblance of flat ground the very day they had arrived. Megatron could still see the neat rows of blasted soil and charred organic refuse in the telltale sign of seeker flight formations, despite the more recent debris of the fight with the Autobots scattered on top.

And wasn't that a thought that still stung. There had been no way at all to predict what had happened; one moment Megatron was fighting the Prime in the middle of a pitched battle, then that blinding light had appeared, and the next moment every single Autobot had been replaced by twisted replicas. None of the invaders shared that surprise. Megatron himself had looked down at the dark-plated mech in his hands, momentarily bewildered, and the new Prime had taken advantage of that split-second indecision to strike him with some kind of device that flooded his sensory system with glitches and nonsensical data until he was sent into emergency shutdown.

Megatron had teased out the rest of the details through a combination of eavesdropping, theorizing, and the helpful information offered by Optimus Prime himself.

Megatron rumbled his engine. It was merely a setback, as any setbacks occurred in war. Autobots were Autobots no matter what universe they came from, and in this case, he would be more than happy to see all of their heads ripped off and planted on pikes.

For now, he waited. He ignored the ashen dirt caking his feet and the foul smell of rotting foliage with the same air with which he disregarded the enemy Autobots arranged all around him.

He heard the Decepticons before he saw them; the boom of flight engines preceded the pinprick flashes of thruster fire by half a minute. An entire armada approached in a defensive formation around a single jet and a mech in root mode.

"I appreciate your punctuality," the Prime said dryly as Starscream and Soundwave came to a halt several yards in the air above. Starscream's wings twitched in the last micro-transformations to root mode as he crossed his arms and smirked, poised with certainty on his firing thrusters. Soundwave was, as always, completely inscrutable from where he hovered slightly behind Starscream.

Megatron met Soundwave's stare with a microscopic nod.  _ I am well, _ he thought. He let the firmness of his thoughts stand in counterpoint to the degrading state of his frame.  _ The Prime personally informed me that he intends to let me leave today. Integrate that into your plan however you will. _

Soundwave didn't visibly react, but he was no doubt managing a dozen comm lines at that moment. Megatron kept his stance relaxed and easy.

Starscream raised one hand, clasping his elbow with the other. The gesture took in the convoy of Decepticons who rolled to a stop behind him, unloaded a large shipment of energon, and then backed away. "The energon, as promised."

Prime looked back and forth between his captive and the Air Commander thoughtfully. Then he said, "Ironhide, take a sample from one of those and give it to our guest.”

Starscream's smirk grew wider, but he made no move to interrupt. The surly bodyguard moved to obey. Several minutes of silence passed, broken only by the sound of Ironhide funneling energon into a small sampling cube and the shuffling clicks of Autobots fidgeting with holstered weapons.

At last the cube was thrust into Megatron's face hard enough to dent his lips-- damn them for taking his arms so that he couldn't even fuel himself-- but he steeled himself and began to drink. Megatron sighed for added effect once the cube was drained and yanked away from his mouth.

"Much better than the dregs they've been feeding me," Megatron said lazily. He met the Prime's stare right on, imbuing his own expression with just the right balance of calmness and arrogance. "Well? The terms of the ransom have been fulfilled. It is your turn now."

Optimus Prime considered for a moment, then reached out and grabbed Megatron by the throat, palpating his neck cables roughly, and then jammed his fingers in the metal right next to the hinge of his jaw. Submission to the other's will was  _ magnitudes  _ more humiliating with Starscream right in front of him, but Megatron opened his mouth and let the Prime see that there was nothing inside. The air felt cold against the exposed metal.

When Prime moved as if to slip his fingers inside, Megatron immediately snapped his teeth together hard enough that he would have surely taken the Prime's fingers off, if the other hadn't pulled them back with equally swift reflexes. He didn't have to tolerate  _ that _ from the Prime. There was a pulse of hostility from above that he recognized as Soundwave's EM field; a warning of a line that would not be crossed,  _ or else. _

"Very well," Prime said low. He signaled for his soldiers to step back. "Take him."

Soundwave gave his own signal. Four Decepticons-- an armored helicopter and a trine of seekers-- descended from the clouds in alt-mode. The seekers stayed in the air, circling threateningly as the helicopter descended to the ground and opened her door.

Megatron walked to the medic, throwing every spare resource he had towards his equilibrium sensors to show no trace of the slight daze coming over his senses. When the door shut and locked behind him, and cockpit began to vibrate with the telltale chopping of rotors activating, he finally allowed himself to sink onto his back with a low groan. His fuel tank was already starting to overheat from the poisoned energon reacting with the current contents, and the wires going from his engine to his limbs felt cold in comparison.

A nearby compartment ratcheted open, and a slurry of wires began connecting to his medical ports and various parts of his frame. When a clear tube full of blue liquid dropped in front of his face, Megatron reminded himself that this was one of his own, most loyal soldiers before taking it in his mouth and letting it dispense the antidote.

"Beginning medical scan," said a calm, monotone voice.

The light of Megatron's still-exposed spark lit up the interior of the cockpit, allowing Megatron to see the full process of the examination. However, he couldn't move until it was complete, making the tantalizing view out of the window impossible to see for the moment. He turned his head once the last of the antidote dispensed and said, "Gravesteel, report on the situation outside."

The medic was silent for several moments before responding, "I and my accompaniment are facing no interception from the Autobots Optimus Prime is conversing with Starscream. His soldiers are beginning to load the energon onto their own transports. No hostilities have been initiated."

Another pause, while the buzz of data being transmitted through Megatron's ports intensified. "The ambush will begin at Starscream's signal. We are using manual signals only in order to give them no opportunity to spy on comms, which is why you were not contacted beforehand. My primary directive is to take you back to the Nemesis for dedicated medical care while Trine Fifteen acts as my cover, should pursuit arise."

Starscream was obviously taking this opportunity to hoard the accolades to himself while shunting Megatron aside as an invalid weakling. However, with no weapons, his arms missing, and his spark chamber still exposed, Megatron would die as soon as the first shots were fired if he were to try to join the fray. "Very well," he said. He itched to know what could be done about the infernal device in his chest, but Gravesteel was scrupulous and would no doubt inform him shortly. He couldn't afford to look impatient or frantic, not after being handled so humiliatingly by the enemy in front of his soldiers.

Just in time; most of the cables disconnected from Megatron's ports, and from above a hatch opened to allow Gravesteel's internal machinery to extend to his open chest. A medical override gained access to his motor systems and kept him still. Megatron ground his teeth so hard that sparks occasionally pinged off of the medical pulleys as they delicately probed at the bolts and wires of the device. At last, a final series of creaks sounded at the same time two claws lifted the device free from his chest. He couldn't help but gasp in relief; the absence of pain and the violating presence was sweeter than victory.

"I will need more time to assess the damage to your spark chamber," Gravesteel said in mild disapproval as his chest plating immediately snapped shut and locked into place, but her energy field flickered to alarm an instant later.

Megatron sat up just in time to feel Gravesteel make a wide arc in the sky. The percussive blast of machine guns activating rattled him from where he sat; he growled in frustration as he instinctively tried to brace himself against the floor, only to remember that nothing remained of his arms. "None of my injuries are life threatening. Stay on the battlefield, and keep me steady so I can observe!"

Claws fastened on his shoulders and back kibble, propping him up as he slowly rose to his knees and peered out of the window. Just then, his comms roared to life with a crackle, sending a barrage of excited voices to Megatron's audials in concert with the rumble of ammunition and bright flashes of energy weapons.

[Lord Megatron is back!]

Several cheers and flickers of binary heralded this announcement.

[Another day, another Autobot, eh?]

[Let's show him what he's been missing out on!]

[Better not crash with Lord Megatron on board or you're slag, Gravesteel!]

The next burst of fire vibrated through Megatron's chassis with special vigor.  _ [My _ armor is thicker than yours. If anyone gets slagged, it will be you, and  _ I _ will have to weld you back together.]

[Enough chattering,] Megatron ordered. [Fight like Decepticons!]

He had Gravesteel circle back around to the battlefield, taking cover in a cloud bank before dipping down just enough to see the ground. He spared a single moment to regret that he couldn't join the fighting before focusing on the battle itself.

The Autobots had been forced into defensive positions; all of the ones surrounding Prime ducked under energy shields, returning fire at the seekers as they continually harried them from above and flew over the stacks of energon, as if to steal them back. Optimus Prime's attention was occupied by Starscream himself, who-- Megatron had to increase his optical sensors to their maximum range-- seemed to be flagrantly taunting the Prime before engaging him in a half-ground, half-acrobatic battle.

Of course the glitch was enjoying the chance to display himself in battle.

However, for all the Prime’s games, he was no fool; Megatron saw several scattered Autobot soldiers emerge from hiding places across the terrain and open fire with anti-aircraft weaponry, sending seekers lurching out of formation to avoid being grounded.

The first casualty went to Optimus Prime. Prime swiped with his axe to make Starscream dart away, made as if to follow up with a shot from the blaster in his off-hand, but instead shot over Starscream's shoulder with unerring accuracy at a seeker who picked the wrong moment to be daring in his swoop over the retreating energon transports.

The pale blue mech immediately swung back up and retreated, smoking heavily from his completely shattered cockpit. [Damn. That's what I get for messing around in front of Prime.]

[Idiot!] was all Starscream said in response before continuing to fight. He soared into the air just in time to dodge a blaster shot from Ironhide, and moments later Thundercracker and Skywarp transformed into root mode to back him up.

Despite the concerted harrying by the Decepticons, the transports with the energon were slowly making their way back towards the Ark.

[Enough,] Starscream shouted. [That amount of energon is no great loss to us. Pull back before we expend any more resources on this little game.]

The Decepticons began their retreat, but slowly and ragged, some formations breaking slightly or lagging behind the others before fully turning back-- never to a degree where the Autobots could take advantage. Just enough to make it seem like it was a reluctant falling back. Starscream and his seekers were the last to remain fully engaged, and after a minute longer they all transformed into alt-mode and jetted away, thrusters trailing fire like miniature comets as they wove through the last of the shots and rose into the clouds, too high to be pursued further.

  
  
  


Fortunately, the Decepticon armory was well stocked with spare limbs and weaponry-- courtesy of both Decepticon and Autobot salvaged frames, as well as Shockwave's continual design efforts. It only took a few hours for Megatron to have new arms attached to his body, complete with his trusted fusion cannon design. He finally felt like himself again: autonomous, powerful, deadly.

Except, that was, for the dull, pounding ache from his spark. It persisted despite the pain-dampening program that Gravesteel had discretely installed onto his software sometime during the ride back to base with nothing more than an enclosed data packet containing instructions on how to toggle the code and a recommended time limit to come to the medbay for a more careful check-up. As it was, Megatron had no time to spare; he sent Gravesteel to tend to the injured Decepticons and began preparing himself for an address to his soldiers.

Megatron emerged from Shockwave's lab and immediately came face-to-face with Starscream. His wings and his chin were held high, and he grinned at Megatron's expression.

"You're lucky that these Autobots don't know you as well as the old ones did," Megatron said. "If you had laid the act on any more thickly, they would have seen through the ruse from the start."

Starscream sniped back, "You're lucky that the poison I picked for them was one I’ve used on you before. If your self-repair hadn't recognized it and slowed the reaction, you would have offlined before the medic gave you the antidote."

"How long do we have before the symptoms begin?"

"That depends entirely on how much fuel they have in reserve." Starscream tilted his head expectantly.

Megatron made a short gesture. "No more than half. Knowing their habits, they're going to have a  _ volunteer  _ fill their entire tank before they decide to distribute the energon to everyone."

"No matter. Though the symptoms manifest almost immediately and can be treated, the reaction of the compound itself is irreversible after a matter of minutes." Starscream's optics lit up in delight. "By the time they realize what has happened, it will be too late to remove the corrosion from their systems."

"In that case," Megatron said thoughtfully. After a split-second pause, he nodded very slightly at Starscream. "Order all able-bodied seekers to be ready for battle and lead them in an aerial assault against the Autobots. I will lead the ground forces. We must strike while the iron is hot."

_ The best battle is the one that has already been won,  _ Megatron thought grimly.

Starscream, ever delighted to strike against a weakened target and preening from the slight show of approval Megatron had given him, darted from the room immediately. Megatron hailed Soundwave on the officers' channel, and the mech arrived mere moments later, as if he had already been near the labs.

"Send the battle alert to all mechs on the Nemesis," Megatron ordered. "And try to break through to the comms of the Ark. We must have as much information as we can on their status if this ambush is to be utterly successful." He stood from where he had been sitting on a nearby desk.

"Acknowledged," Soundwave nodded. Then, "Lord Megatron: is fully functional?"

Megatron frowned, detecting the true question beneath. "I am well, Soundwave." His spark chamber throbbed with pain, betraying the truth, and he couldn't stop his jaw from clenching. Hiding the signs of his condition long enough to address the Decepticons would be difficult-- very difficult. But he would do it.

Soundwave was too astute to openly ask Megatron about the contradiction. There were no secrets between them; he did nothing except give Megatron a long look and say, "Extensive medical examination at later time: advised. Troop confidence: undamaged by Lord Megatron's absence."

Megatron made a low grunt of assent. "Let there be no delay. I am going to address them now." After a pause, he added, "Accompany me." He turned and walked towards the door.

Then he was halted by a light touch on his shoulder.

"The Autobots: will pay," Soundwave said. "Optimus Prime: will regret his actions."

  
  
  


The milling, eager crowd immediately split into even ranks the moment the door revealed Megatron, his silver plating freshly cleaned. The air itself practically vibrated with the excitement of so many excited mechs packed into one place at the same time.

Megatron took his time walking to the far edge, where a small platform had been set up waiting for his arrival. He let the Decepticons see not just his even stride, but the extra scrapes and dents he had accumulated from his time with the Autobots.

"DECEPTICONS!" Megatron roared. All the soldiers in formation shouted and howled in welcome. Their mingled energy fields made a storm of welcome and fierce anticipation, heavy feet pounding the ground and weapons thrusting into the air.

“Your battle today has secured us an opportunity for a decisive strike against the enemy. We face a new foe," Megatron intoned. "But an Autobot is still an Autobot! They think they can subjugate us; they think that pain alone is enough to make them masters of us. Expect no mercy from them-- give no mercy to them! Today, we will teach them the true meaning of pain!"

Megatron threw an arm skywards. "Transform and rise up!"

  
  
  


_ The howling of battle. Bloodlust curdling into disbelief and fear. _

The medbay was full to the brim. Most of the injured soldiers had laid themselves in the hallways or propped themselves against walls, and were cleaning and welding their own wounds. No matter where Megatron paced, the metal walls echoed with groans of pain and sounds of struggle-- not all of the injured were well enough to tend to their own wounds, leading many to have to be forcibly held down by a comrade while another performed first aid.

There were dents in Megatron's own plating so deep that the metal pressed painfully against internal wires, and gashes that were still warm from where he had welded them shut himself, letting the medics attend to those in critical condition first. All of it paled in comparison to the black-hole deep pain of his spark.

_ Prime unerringly seeking him out in the fray of the battlefield, optics dancing with delight as he sheared through a seeker's body across the waist. "I didn't expect to meet you on a battlefield for quite some time," he purred. Energon sizzled and sparked on the blade of his axe as he flourished and kicked the fallen seeker aside. "I thank you for your thoughtful gift to bolster our strength. Now... prove yourself worth my time." _

Megatron gave in and activated the pain-dampening programming. Tactile information dropped out of his sensory system in an instant, leaving him with proprioception and other motor senses.

It was nothing short of madness. Soundwave had managed to intercept their communications to confirm that the alert for battle assembly had only gone out once the Decepticons were en route. Somehow, the Autobots had met them twice as quickly as they should have, a time advantage so large they might as well have not been taken by surprise at all.

And the way they fought.

Megatron had authorized Shockwave and the scientists to experiment with coding modifications and fuel supplements before, of course. Heightening pain thresholds and inducing bloodlust were easy enough to create on a technical level, but with almost no exceptions those experiments always ended with soldiers that either destroyed themselves from reckless disregard of injuries or grew too frenzied to follow orders. Megatron was not interested in throwing away the lives of his soldiers like toys, so he had halted most of the research in that area.

The Autobots fought with exactly the strength those experimental soldiers had, down to the last mech-- but with none of the mindlessness. They ignored severed limbs, peeled plating, and broken servoes, standing up from injuries that should've sent them into stasis and blasting unsuspecting Decepticon soldiers in the back.

_ Autobots in a dance of death around him, screaming and laughter intermingling, all centered in a mad web around the Prime. The Decepticon ground formation was breaking. Megatron roared and charged his fusion cannon for a blast at the nearest cluster of Autobots, only to be forced to pivot to the side before Optimus could take his arm off with a cut of his axe. _

_ "The Autobots belong to me," he had said to Megatron on the Ark, a lifetime ago. _

_ Megatron snarled and turned his cannon onto the Prime, firing a shot with enough power to bring down a carrier ship. Ironhide jumped between them as if materializing from thin air, taking the shot with his own body; the force of the blast sent Megatron backwards, and with a practiced kick he flipped in the air and transformed into tank mode. He landed and ground his treads, tearing an Autobot soldier to pieces beneath them. _

He passed through one of the recreational areas and saw Soundwave tending to Frenzy and Ravage, the two small mechs laid out on a table. He barely paused in his work, only giving Megatron the smallest of nods. Megatron sent a ping to his personal comm line with a code that meant “private meeting,” offset by a timer of several hours, and continued on his way.

_ Megatron ordered the seekers to concentrate their fire on the Prime. Every blast that came near the Prime led to multiple soldiers covering him with energy shields, returning fire against the Decepticons, and sometimes shielding him with their own bodies. It resembled nothing less than some sort of insectoid hive defending its queen. The combined aerial and ground assault was enough to buy the Decepticons room to retreat as the Autobot line fractured in defense of its leader. Megatron was one of the last to leave, firing shot after shot until his fusion cannon was on the edge of locking up from overheating. _

The ground forces had taken the worst of it; their heavier weight and un-aerodynamic frames meant that many of those who tried to fly away were shot down quickly, leaving them to be harried on the ground by the Autobots. The forested terrain only slowed them down and made them easier to track. The Decepticons had been thoroughly routed, pushed all the way back to home ground until the Autobots halted just out of range of the Nemesis' exterior weaponry.

Megatron continued his agitated, aimless patrol and found himself going to the medbay, stepping around those soldiers in the hallways who were too injured to move out of his way first. He didn't stop until the doors opened at a wave of his hand and shut behind him, leaving him in a room bustling with medics and patients. In the center of it all was Starscream, hissing and grimacing as Gravesteel hammered out the dents from his wings.

The second Starscream saw Megatron, his optics widened and the air in his vents screeched. Gravesteel paused, then slowly stepped back with her head bowed. All of the other medics kept moving, but there was a palpable air of unease; everyone was studiously avoiding looking at the pair of them.

"Starscream," Megatron said. His voice sounded flat and lacking in menace to his own audials, but Starscream immediately went on the defensive.

"It was  _ poison!  _ You tasted it yourself! How was I supposed to know that it would  _ make them stronger?!" _ He kept ranting under Megatron's stare, "And there would be no conceivable benefit to me conspiring with them! If it is anyone's fault, it's  _ yours  _ for ordering the offensive at all! I--"

"Stop embarrassing yourself, Starscream." A memory flashed through his conscious processing-- a flash of light, scraping wires across his spark, cheers as he screamed helplessly. "Obviously the effects of the sabotage could not have been predicted."

The Autobot soldiers had complained about fuel that burned too quickly... that was the first sign that there was something physiologically different about these invaders. Megatron  _ could  _ have seen this coming, but he had been blind-- too greedy, too hasty, too ravenous for vengeance-- and failed to put the pieces together before it led to defeat.

Face iron-cold and still, Megatron turned and ignored Starscream’s sputtering. "Report to me as soon as you are fully functional. We have campaigns to plan."

The universe did not give second chances, and Megatron would keep this lesson in his spark for a long time.


	4. Bloom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers,
> 
> I appreciate your patience in waiting for updates. I hope that this new, extra long chapter (9.3k words!) provides a spot of light for you in these times. My writing is more meaningful because I am able to share it with you!
> 
> P.S.: Shouts out to quetzalpapalotl for beta reading this chapter, and shouts out to Echocave for leaving a comment on Chapter 3 that gave me an idea for a scene in this chapter.

In any other circumstance, Optimus might have been impressed at the complexity of the device before him. The metal container with all its protective layers was designed to contain all forms of energy and otherwise: not only were there layers meant to contain nuclear radiation or withstand entire volleys of bullets, but there were even sound, light, and heat-resistant layers within. The entire contraption was large enough to fill almost the entire room. All details of its construction had been explained to Optimus through a combination of observing the computer monitors occupying the rest of the room and the words of Megatron to fill in the gaps of his scientific knowledge.

However, said device was currently being used to lock down the Matrix, and Optimus would have been less unhappy about having all of his limbs taken away instead. "Is this truly necessary?"

Megatron, standing next to him, looked up and down his tense posture, then answered, "Until we understand the extent of your Matrix's powers and how it functions, yes. Please...don't take this personally. We are simply trying to leave nothing to chance."

"I can tell you how it functions if that is what you need. I could even have my scientists send you the reports from what limited experiments we've done upon the Matrix. But this?" Optimus turned to face Megatron directly. "You trusted all of us enough to make peace. Why can you not trust me on this as well?"

"I do trust you." The simplicity of Megatron's words, the earnest but sad look in his optics, were like a dash of cold water to Optimus' simmering agitation. "I just don't trust _that."_

"Precisely." Starscream's voice broke through their bubble and dragged Optimus' gaze to where the seeker had emerged from behind one of the consoles. "You can't trust mysterious ancient artifacts from Primus under the best of circumstances, and from another universe on top of that? Never!" Starscream’s optics were glued between multiple monitors while he spoke, the fervor of his statements increasing the longer he spoke. "This is already beyond what I've had a chance to observe with our universe’s Matrix. The energy readings on this are completely different... There's no telling what the mode of control could be. And!"

He whirled to face Optimus and pointed at him. "We've already had one miniature crisis dealing with how your systems react to our universe's energon. I'm not about to risk finding out what could happen if your Matrix were to interact freely with _our_ systems!"

The Air Commander had only recently recovered enough from his injuries to be discharged from the medbay, so Optimus hadn't had a chance to talk to him, really. He was still re-computing his processor from the barrage of words-- and the disorientation of seeing Starscream smiling fondly at Megatron-- when Megatron put a hand on Optimus’ shoulder and drew him back in.

"Tell me something, and be honest." Megatron's voice was quiet but stern. "Have you really never been affected by the Matrix in any way since you started carrying it? Has it never tried to influence your decisions?"

“It’s not--” Optimus stopped, groping for an explanation. The Matrix did often have an inclination towards certain decisions he made. They weren't commands or suggestions, but he had come to rely on it often enough that the occasional waves of warmth were reassuring to him. It was an artifact of wisdom and life, something precious to be used with great care.

All of that was true, and... he didn't think Megatron and his Decepticons would ever accept it on his word alone. Optimus could probably force the issue past Megatron and Starscream, but would they _really_ believe him? Would it be worth the cost of their trust just to keep the Matrix in his possession? So many terrible things could happen when suspicion and fear were left to fester... Even now, as the moments dragged on in silence, Optimus could see the tiny mechanisms in Megatron’s optics begin to dilate and refocus in rising wariness.

No, Optimus was not going to do anything that would give Megatron and the Decepticons cause to distrust him. Not again.

 _A Prime is more than just the carrier of the Matrix._ Optimus settled into a less threatening posture and dampened the noise of his engines. However, he kept his voice firm and his head high as he told Megatron, "You may keep the Matrix in containment for as long as it takes to test it to your satisfaction. However, I have requests of my own. Do not damage or alter the Matrix in any way. If you absolutely must conduct an experiment that could be damaging, consult me before doing so. And once you've confirmed that it is not dangerous, allow me to take the Matrix back."

Starscream peeked out from behind a console to look at Megatron. Megatron stood contemplative for a few moments, then nodded. "I agree. Thank you for your trust," he added softly. "I will make sure that it is not misplaced."

  
  
  


"Energon stores: full. Repair of vessels: complete. Winding down: necessary.”

That was what Soundwave, apparently the "chief motivation officer" of the Decepticons, had to say within seconds of Megatron asking him for a report on the current situation later that day. Optimus agreed with the assessment; rewards were always good for troop morale, and they had no reason to hold back now that the two ships and their personnel were back in top shape.

The Decepticons opened the hull of the Nemesis, exposing several launching decks which the Constructicons spent an entire day fitting with energon dispensers, raised platforms for dancing, and multicolored light fixtures. All of the Autobots who weren't helping haul pink energon for the dispensers were assisting in other preparations or milling about with the rest of the Decepticons, for whom this was apparently a familiar, if infrequent, ritual.

A few hours later, darkness fell over the planet and the atmosphere was at a boiling point. Enmeshed energy fields made ripples and waves like rain falling into a pool. Decepticons and Autobots jostled each other from the upper decks all the way to the ground floor. Optimus was sorely tempted to go to one of the upper decks in hopes of finding a modicum of privacy, but everyone was so densely packed that moving anywhere would make him a cause of annoyance. Besides, it would be rude to disappear to a corner before the celebration even began.

Speaking of...

The crowd cheered as Soundwave took to the stage at the center. His white plating was covered in painted spirals and zig-zags that glowed neon underneath the stage lights, and for some reason he was wearing a strip of cloth tied around his helm.

"Decepti-CONS!" His voice boomed out, augmented by his own speakers as well as ones placed strategically around the room.

Half of the crowd cheered and whooped.

"Autooooooo-BOTS!"

A pause, then a weaker scattering of confused cheers.

Soundwave shook his head and clicked in disappointment. "Autobots: can do better than that. Where is Optimus Prime?"

Several hundred helms swiveled to face him at once. Optimus sighed. This was no war zone, and he could certainly deliver if shouting was all that was being asked.

He straightened to his full height, and in a decibel he kept reserved for delivering a speech in the middle of a battlefield, he shouted, "AUTOBOTS!"

The resulting cheer was thunderous, matching the Decepticons' cheer and surpassing it. Mechs of both faction symbols grinned and elbowed each other. As the cheers quieted, somewhere across the room Optimus thought he heard Ironhide's loud drawl saying "That's my Prime!" in a distinctly tipsy tone.

“Motivation check!”

Half of the crowd snapped to attention. Confused Autobots peered at their companions and mimicked them after a moment.

“Are you MOTIVATED?”

_“Motivated, officer!”_

“Pound out those dents!”

An earthquake of noise practically shook the room as the Decepticons-- and Autobots-- pounded their feet repeatedly on the ground.

“Unstick those gears!”

Wheels spun and turbines shrieked from all sides.

“Play your war music!”

Horns honked; sirens screamed. Fists pounded against armor, energy weapons crackled in raised fists, and magazine chambers ratcheted into place.

“Who are we?”

A wordless roar from vocalizers, two names battling for dominance.

Soundwave waited for the shouts to die down. Then he raised his arms and said, “We. Are. CYBERTRONIANS!”

“CYBERTRONIANS!”

“For Cybertron!”

“FOR CYBERTRON!”

Everyone screamed at the top of their vocalizers. Dozens of mechs were dancing before Soundwave even lowered his hands, and the lights with them. The colored overheads flickered on and loud music began to play.

  
  
  


Optimus quickly extricated himself from the dancing mass at the ground floor and managed to find a space for himself at the second-highest deck. The highest deck was not the ideal place to find a solitary corner, he found out, because it was the favored gathering place for Decepticons and drunkenly bold Autobots to try to leap, glide, or drive off the edge to land on one of the decks opposite.

At that precise moment, Optimus heard the roar of gunning engines over the blare of music and conversation. A blur of orange and yellow shot out from the deck above. Optimus winced as Hot Rod transformed midair, did a somersault, and then hit the edge of the deck below directly across his midriff. The mechs standing above cheered, but fortunately a few still had enough of their wits about them to grab his arms and help him back to solid ground.

"I hope no one seriously injures themselves," Optimus muttered. "I don't think Ratchet will take kindly to anyone interrupting his break to take care of party-related casualties."

He was glad everyone else was enjoying themselves so thoroughly. It didn't matter that the majority of the soldiers present were half-glitched off of high grade; even if they had been sober, they would have mingled as easily as they did now, faction brands forgotten in the camaraderie of a shared purpose.

In a few days, they would depart from this planet and return to Cybertron to begin rebuilding.

Optimus winced again at the sound of another thundering engine. His plating shivered and transformation seams clicked, only settling back into place once he manually overrode his weapon systems from coming online. For spark's sake, there were no Cybertronians besides their allied group on this entire planet. No one was about to come crashing through the ceiling to start opening fire on everyone.

He would've never considered this under any other circumstances, but perhaps it wouldn't be too much of a compromise to have some extra high grade-- just a little bit. Enough that he could tolerate the noise without his mind turning to darker places. The empty housing in his chest ached and felt cold. Optimus made his way to one of the connecting hallways, murmuring unheard apologies as he pushed through the crowd to one of the energon dispensers. He took two cubes and left the deck as surreptitiously as he could.

A few turns later, and the relative quiet of the hallways already began to smooth down Optimus' frayed emotional circuitry. Still, he looked down the hallway both ways before unlatching his mask and bringing the first cube to his lips, drinking the entire thing in one long pull.

The high-grade mixed with the regular rations in his tanks with a hot sensation, and within a few minutes his internals thrummed with the sensation of energized circuits. He didn't really feel any different in his processor though, so he raised the second cube and tilted it back.

"Hello," Megatron's voice came from a few yards away.

Optimus jumped and lowered the cube so quickly that some of the energon sloshed down his fingers, like he had been caught doing something illicit. "Hello," he blurted out, his mask shooting back over his face with a sharp click.

Megatron tilted his helm. His expression was mild and unassuming as he asked, "Is something wrong?"

"No." The lie came out so quickly that the rest of Optimus’ processor stalled for a moment. "I was just taking a break from the crowd. I was planning on going back as soon as I finished this," he added, raising the barely-depleted cube in his hand and hoping that Megatron wouldn't ask further.

"I see," Megatron said. And because some things didn't change no matter what universe Optimus was in, the blue-eyed mech noticed exactly what Optimus didn't want him to and continued, "You know, drinking alone is no way to enjoy a party."

"I wasn't enjoying it." Optimus blinked. Maybe he should've listened to all those sayings about 'liquid truth,' because no amount of willpower seemed to be able to stop him from just saying what was on his mind. He had honestly thought it wasn't that dramatic of an effect. He probably shouldn't have decided to test his tolerance in a public place where people could see him blunder, but it's not like he had ever had the inclination to try getting drunk before now...

He was brought back to reality by Megatron lowering his helm slightly so he could look Optimus in the optics. "And why is that?"

"I’ve never really enjoyed loud parties." He turned his face away and looked at Megatron from the corners of his optics.

"They certainly aren't for everyone," Megatron agreed. He reached out and put his hand around the bottom of Optimus' cube; the tips of his fingers brushed against the sides of Optimus' as he gently tugged it out of his unresisting grip. "But maybe it's not just about that."

"I'm sorry," Optimus said.

"For what?"

He gestured vaguely at the energon cube. "It's not your job to take care of me."

"Is it not enough that I want to make sure you are well?"

"I'm not supposed to need it."

And that was too revealing-- far too revealing. Optimus turned away and tried to retreat before he could say anything else he shouldn't, but Megatron caught him by the shoulder, turned him around, and pushed him until his back was against the wall. His expression was utterly serious and focused. "Why?"

"Because," Optimus began, voice full of static. "Because-- why do you want to know?"

Megatron didn't respond at first. He stooped carefully to place the cube of high grade on the floor, and Optimus took the opportunity to reset his optics frantically, desperate to keep the surrounding mechanisms from overheating and rupturing energon down his cheeks. He felt marginally more in control of himself by the time Megatron rose back up to his full height, but the flimsy feeling of confidence dissipated when their optics met again.

All the battles he had fought, and yet in none of them had he felt so unprotected and witless as he did now.

“I had to drag Starscream out of the lab to get him to come to the celebration,” Megatron began. “He tried to say that he was working on the energon crisis, even though we have plenty. Then he tried to tell me that he was getting ahead on plans for rebuilding Cybertron. He was, of course. He was working very hard, just like he’s been working day and night since he was discharged from the medbay. But sometimes, mechs don’t work hard just because they want to do good. Sometimes it’s because they’re trying to run from something else inside of them.”

He looked keenly at Optimus. “Being the leader of so many mechs makes one much more susceptible to such thoughts.”

Optimus' vision flickered, glitching for a moment and turning Megatron's helm silver, his face into a rugged terrain of frown lines. He closed his eyes, and a single drip of energon finally escaped the corner of his optic. "A moment, please."

He heard Megatron step away, finally giving room for Optimus to turn and wipe his face before the tear could slip under the edge of his mask.

"If overworking is a bad thing, then I think I _should_ retire for the night," Optimus said. The party wasn't even into its third hour yet, but the thought of lingering aimlessly for however many hours it actually lasted made him feel exhausted and guilty at the same time. He probably wouldn't recharge, but...

"If I may offer an alternative," Megatron interjected softly. "Perhaps I could interest you in a few games of strategy? Sometimes, redirecting the thoughts of the processor is more effective than trying to ignore them."

It was better than wandering aimlessly through the crowds, and it gave Optimus an excuse to fulfill his social duties in a way that wasn’t too draining. “That sounds agreeable.”

Megatron put in a comm call while they walked, so by the time they arrived, there was already a large metallic box sitting in the center of a small table. There were a few other tables scattered throughout the room, meaning it was likely some sort of recreational lounge. It was thankfully abandoned, though; the music from the main deck was nothing more than a faint vibration on the very edge of Optimus' sensors.

He was already starting to feel mortified from the ordeal in the hallway. Trying to drink his problems away in a moment of weakness was already quite shameful, but being caught? And then crying in front of _Megatron?_ The other's presence, and his words, had relieved Optimus' anxiety so easily that he was questioning why he had been so rattled in the first place.

"Watch this," Megatron said. He pressed a latch on either side of the box, and the surface began to unfold, transforming as smoothly as a living Cybertronian until it formed an elegant, tiered surface. There was a sharp click and two compartments transformed out of opposite ends of the board, holding neat rows of triangular chips.

"It's called Turmae," Megatron said. He hesitated for a moment and then said, slightly abashed, "Do you have it where you came from? I can explain the rules to you as we play, if you don't."

"That sounds good." Optimus took a chair and added, "Though I don't think I would be a good opponent even if I knew the game. I've never been one for strategy games."

"Oh really?" Megatron also sat down, though far more slowly, as he had to twist slightly in order to keep his wings from clipping the back of his chair. He raised an optical ridge in genuine curiosity. "I never had the misfortune of facing you in battle, but I would expect the leader of an army to be skilled at what's essentially a simulation of war."

Optimus shrugged. "I've never been one for sticking to a set of rules. Just doesn't work for me to restrict myself like that." _And war doesn't allow you to follow one set of rules,_ he added silently. He'd had enough sharing for now, and his systems had recalibrated around the high grade, so he was finding it easier to control his vocalizer again.

Megatron's optics dimmed, and the surrounding metal relaxed into an unreadable expression. Thoughtfulness? Reminiscing? He was keeping his EM field to himself, so there were no cues there, either.

Optimus rested a finger on the chips, playing with the texture on the edges. "So, how do we play?"

Megatron's optics brightened. "Right. So, to begin..."

The game went well despite the learning curve-- though "game" was a generous term in Optimus' view, as he progressed at the rate of a minibot trying to tow Omega Supreme. The rules of the board were such that each type of game piece changed abilities depending on what tier of the board it was placed on. Remembering all of the configurations was enough to tie up most of Optimus' active memory, and trying to actually play the game had Optimus giving up on memorization and asking Megatron to remind him of the rules at every other play.

"Before you move," Megatron said, interrupting the whirring of Optimus' thoughts. Megatron pointed at one of Optimus' pieces. "This gamma piece is open to being captured by my zeta. If you were planning on moving like this--" He picked up the piece and moved it to the next tier below-- "Then I would move my pieces like so, and capture it. However, if you moved this cluster instead..." And Megatron proceeded to outline three different strategies Optimus could use against his pieces.

"I hope this isn't a beginner's strategy game," Optimus said, rubbing his hands over his helm. There was an incrementally louder noise coming from the hallway behind him, but his strategy processor discarded it as non-threatening.

"It's not," Megatron laughed. "I'm aware it's not the kindest move for me to introduce you to such a difficult game so suddenly, but we're not here to compete with each other. I was hoping the mental exercise would take your mind off of your troubles." He leaned forward on one elbow, one finger crooked over his chin playfully. "So, did it work?"

Optimus stopped, actually considering the question deeply. True, being a beginner trying to keep up with a master of the game was slightly embarrassing, but it was... a mundane sort of frustration, with nothing at stake but a few twinges from his ego. Any time Optimus lost one of his pieces, whatever frustration he was about to feel was alleviated by a small smile and an offer of assistance from Megatron. He hadn't checked his chronometer in a long time, and he realized-- two hours had already passed since they sat down, and he hadn't thought about a single thing besides playing the game.

"It did help," Optimus said, wonderingly. He returned Megatron's smile, knowing it would show above his mask. "...Thank you."

Whatever Megatron was going to say next was interrupted by the whoosh of the door opening behind him. Optimus hardly had time to turn around in his seat before being hit by a blast of noise-- drunken cheering from a mech who turned out to be Hot Rod, and distortion-heavy music playing from speakers belonging to Soundwave, whose neon paint accents were heavily smudged as he filed in behind the smaller mech.

"Yoooooo, Prime!" Hot Rod lilted in a sing-song voice. "Yo, Megs!"

"Hot Rod," Optimus said with faint exasperation. He sat up straighter in his seat from where he had been leaning forward towards Megatron. "Please don't use nicknames for people without getting permission."

Megatron mouthed 'Megs' silently to himself. One corner of his mouth twitched upwards as he sighed and said, "Well, there are worse nicknames, I suppose."

"Yes," Soundwave agreed. "Four thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven years ago: Astrotrain, under sedative programming after hitting his head on the deck, referred to Megatron as--"

"Soundwave, _please,"_ Megatron interrupted, gesturing loosely between himself, Optimus, and their playing board. "I'm in the middle of something."

"In the middle between 'boring' and 'nerd,'" Hot Rod said flippantly. Unbeknownst to the two of them, he had circled around behind Megatron's chair and was currently playing limbo with Megatron's left wing. It didn't take long for him to lose his balance and fall with a clank onto the ground and out of Optimus' sight. “Whoa!”

Megatron tilted his head to regard the prone form curiously. "Well," he said at last, "that's the first time my wings have been any sort of use at a party. I'm used to them keeping mechs _away_ from me."

Optimus pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He would've ordinarily had a lecture prepared for a situation like this, but as long as Megatron didn't seem to be bothered... He himself was too relaxed to chastise Hot Rod in any meaningful way.

"Would you mind helping him up?" Megatron directed Soundwave. "Not all of us can be the life of the party. We'll keep the 'boring' in this corner of the celebration, eh?"

"Affirmative," Soundwave said, and between his helping hands and Megatron's, Hot Rod was quickly whisked out of the room.

They resumed their game in companionable quiet, broken only by the occasional question and response exchange between them. It was getting difficult for Optimus to keep making intelligent plays; after a haze of turns, he found himself drowsing with his helm propped up on one hand in the middle of his turn, with not a single active process focused on the game at all.

He shook himself with great effort. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to be so rude.”

“It’s quite alright,” said Megatron. “We can start a new game at some other time.”

“Right.” Optimus blearily reviewed their schedule for the next few days and made calculations. “We’re reviewing the schedule for reconstruction...the day after tomorrow, during the fourth shift. We might have time to play again...hmm…” Optimus made a vague gesture. “We can talk about it the next time we see each other?”

Megatron nodded and started collecting the playing chips. “You can go ahead and leave now if you’re tired, Prime. I can clean up.”

Optimus considered doing so, but instead stayed long enough to stack all the chips from his side of the board back into their compartment. “Good night, Megatron.”

“Good night.”

~~~

Optimus reactivated to the sight of the same ceiling he had woken up to every day for the past five decades. He still lay there for several minutes, enjoying the soft sunlight that shone across the room and tickled his plating in a way artificial UV lighting could never replicate. It was the tenth hour, an entire three hours past his normal alarm, but that was a luxury he was allowed, now; having the Decepticons working on their side rather than against them solved a lot of personnel shortages, and there was simply no need for Optimus to be on call at every hour.

He was finally able to recharge through an entire night without startling awake, frantically groping at the edges of his berth and half-convinced he was about to wake up on an interrogation table.

Optimus sat up and rolled smoothly off of his berth, taking a long, unhurried moment to recalibrate his gears and servos, vent deeply, and rev his engine a few times. When he looked through the window, he could see a couple of mechs already rolling back across the cleared out ruins of one of Iacon's city squares towards the construction site of the day.

Optimus flicked away the vestigial pings from his tactical subsystem warning _danger, enemy territory._ Those warnings were nothing but reflexes, now. In his heart and his mind, he knew the Decepticons to be his friends.

Optimus began his walk to the mess hall, opening comms and sending his customary pings to his officers for status updates. One by one, they responded positively, and the good mood of his Autobots bolstered him as he walked through the square and waved back at the scattered mechs who saluted him as he passed.

Optimus greeted Megatron happily inside the mess hall as the other indicated the cleared space on the opposite side of his table. As always, Megatron's side of the table was occupied by an entire computer console, plus several stacks of data pads and a few styluses that had rolled every which way on the table surface. There was already a large cube of energon at Optimus' place, which had been carefully cleared of clutter.

"Good morning, Optimus.” The sight of Megatron smiling as he spoke sent an unnameable sensation through Optimus' circuits. "I know you just woke up, but I was hoping you would be amenable to helping me with the city plans for the first part of your day. After you refuel, of course."

"If you would like my help." Optimus sat, picked up the energon cube, and opened his mask in one fluid motion. He briefly caught Megatron's optics with his own, but their gazes were broken by the rim of the cube as he drank.

Optimus put the cube down after a polite number of pulls. "So, what would you like my help with today?"

Megatron started. "Yes. Well, I've made another draft of the city map based on the placement of utilities in relation to residential areas. Could you look it over and give me your thoughts?"

Optimus nodded, and Megatron smiled again. He pressed a key on his console, making Optimus' personal datapad chime from his subspace.

"You know," Optimus said, breaching a well-worn track of conversation, "all of my learning related to city planning and architecture is entirely book-learned, not practical experience. I can't imagine that there's truly anything I could offer that someone else couldn't tell you."

Megatron thought for several moments before saying, "I value your opinion as my co-leader, as well as your perspective resulting from your unique circumstances. Equally so, I value your company more than a few extra minutes of efficiency, and your insights are not so superfluous as you think they are." He gestured towards Optimus' data pad. "Tell me what you think, and I'll show you."

"Well, the balance of energon refineries in relation to the projected population seems just right. However, their placement as-is could cause traffic issues during the shift-change time of the day, and speeding violations as well as crashes occur more frequently in such areas. Also, if this refinery were to shut down for any reason--" Optimus circled an area of the map with a stylus, knowing the alteration was being projected onto Megatron's console-- "This entire subdivision, more or less, wouldn't have access to energon in their homes, and they would need to travel all the way to this refinery's servicing area in order to refuel..."

Optimus talked for some time longer, and every time he glanced up from his data pad, Megatron was either taking notes on his own console or looking intently at his face. Optimus belatedly realized that his mask was still down, and he hadn't even finished his energon yet. It seemed...rude, somehow, to cover his face again just because Megatron was looking at him. He finished his report, then immediately downed the rest of his energon before snapping his mask shut.

Megatron’s wings tilted back and forth slightly as he raised his eyes from the console. "See? You have plenty to contribute to this area of discussion. Your past occupation as a law enforcer lets you see things that I don't know."

"Well," Optimus mumbled, "I never _made_ anything. I just enforced the law...for a time."

"And that means you know what sorts of daily troubles a stable populace might face--what types of issues civilians might face, and how that could affect the overall health of a given area of a city. That's valuable as well."

"I'm glad you think so." Optimus studied his hands. So much of his life had been spent in war and violence, and even before then, he had been a police officer, forged to uphold the law of a horrific regime. His purpose was stability first, and all the use of authority and force that entailed. It was still hard to look back on those memory files without feeling sick. The thought that any of Orion Pax’s skills could be useful for peace was...something both terrifying and relieving.

Megatron knew about Optimus’ past, but didn’t judge him for it. Those azure optics were warm and trusting, not at all like the harsh suspicion Optimus instinctually expected. Maybe it was the distance between two universes that allowed him to be so kind.

Optimus reset his vocalizer. "Excuse me. I need to go on a walk for a while, if you don't mind."

Megatron blinked rapidly. "Ah, of course." But then he set his datapad down and braced himself on the edge of the table as if moving to stand--

"By myself." Before Megatron's optics could do more than flash in surprise, Optimus hurriedly added, "I just need to clear my mind, and I'd like to visit some of my friends before the day's work is too busy."

Megatron sat back down, looking abashed as he turned his helm away slightly, optics pointedly fixed on the screen of his console. "Of course. Take as long as you need. I'll likely still be here whenever you come back."

Optimus arose from his chair and walked away as gracefully as he could, trying not to feel like he was retreating.

  
  
  


He transformed as soon as he reached the square and began kept to the lesser-used areas of the reclaimed city, even though the roads were still littered with debris that jostled him on his wheels and sometimes forced him to transform back to root mode in order to cross particularly high mountains of rubble or squeeze through a narrow space between fallen buildings. He took shortcuts through side streets and alleys until he was back in the busy areas of construction.

He found Ironhide working alongside Rumble and a few other Decepticons to destroy a chunk of concrete blocking the entrance to a building. Optimus waited for them to take a break before calling, "Ironhide? Do you have a few minutes to spare?"

"Anythin' for you, Prime." Ironhide dusted his hands off and fell in step with Optimus as he walked them away from the curious sensors of the surrounding mechs. He cast several glances around them-- even a few glances upwards-- before saying with careful nonchalance, "I'm surprised you're here without Megatron, though."

"Why would that be a surprise?"

Ironhide shrugged. "Just seems like the two of ya are attached by the hip-struts more often than not, is all. What did ya need, Prime?"

"I just wanted to ask how you were doing." Optimus hesitated, then clarified, “Not right now specifically, but in terms of peacetime. How is it for you?”

"Compared to what it was like before? Couldn't be happier. Ya can't argue with full fuel tanks, a good night's recharge, and not having to worry about bein' shot at any second."

Optimus nodded, but said nothing as the other was clearly entering a more pensive train of thought.

"And ya know... I do like the Decepticons here, I really do. It's just...weird, even when everything is going well. There's all this history that everyone knows, but no one wants to talk about. Ya can't even ask to hear stories about what your counterpart in this universe was like, 'cause chances are all the stories would be somethin' about some sort of sick torture or some buddy they killed. It's like walkin' around an abandoned minefield, only everyone's tryin' to pretend that the mines aren't there, if ya understand what I mean?"

"I understand." Though Megatron hadn't exactly been stepping around any mines around Optimus...it was more like he was so preoccupied with the future that he felt no _need_ to talk about the past. Optimus had tried to broach the topic of his counterpart's crimes, early on in the alliance, but Megatron had merely looked at him seriously and said that there was no comparing the Optimus _he_ knew with Optimus himself.

Optimus was just unable to bring himself to the same level of enthusiasm. Slowly, he said, “It’s very strange. There is peace at last, yet not the way any of us could have ever dreamed. One moment we were at war, and the next, we were among mechs who became our friends. It feels...almost too easy.”

Optimus imagined what _his_ Megatron might look like smiling at him from the other side of a planning table, one corner of his mouth curved just a touch higher than the other one. Whatever friendly thing he said would probably come wrapped in a sly barb or a dry remark, but no less honest, if they had truly come to such an accord that they could work side by side…

But that image didn’t really fit, either. The attempt to imagine working with Megatron sent his processor mulling over old memory files instead: reading a miner’s battered datapad at his desk in Rodion, the glyphs igniting realization like newborn stars in his processor; sitting across from that same miner, who had reshaped himself for a harsher revolution; ash-bitter betrayal and white-hot pain blasting through his chassis. Opportunities to earn Megatron’s trust that Orion had lost before he even realized what his aversion to rebellion had looked like to someone who had torn his way free all the way from below Cybertron’s crust.

"I just don’t know,” Optimus said at last. “I suppose I should be happy for the chance at starting over with a clean slate.”

"What chance does a few decades stand against million of years of fightin’?" Ironhide rumbled, smiling up at Optimus. "Maybe ya just need to wait and think for a while longer, get a handle on it, and the solution will come to ya eventually. It always does."

Optimus hoped that the forced smile didn’t show in his optics. "Thank you, Ironhide.”

  
  
  


Optimus thought of the Decepticons from his home universe-- of Megatron. His processor churned with conflicting value statements and memory files, all layered over a tangled web of emotional baggage.

The Autobots from this universe were monstrous and unyielding. _So are the Decepticons from ours,_ part of him whispered spitefully. That part of him... it didn't hate, but it was... Frustrated. Disappointed. Exhausted. The Decepticons were more than ready to meet their match in combat. Megatron had always mocked him for trying to hold to rules of decency in war? Well, now he would have nothing to mock, and he could have an opponent of equal ruthlessness to himself in combat.

Optimus' energon boiled in his tanks. He tore himself away from those vengeful thoughts. The fact that he was even capable of thinking of such things was its own form of sinking horror.

But no, it wasn't emotions and instinctual reactions that mattered: it was how he conducted himself as a leader that did.

And there was nothing he could _do_ , was there? He was sitting here, worrying about the future of the Decepticons-- yes, worrying for them-- yet he would never even find out how they were faring against the mirror universe Autobots.

Optimus had never felt the urge to pray before. He was well aware of the irony of a Prime who didn't worship Primus. Now, however, he was far from home, and powerless to influence the lives of a person-- a group of people whose lives had been entwined with his own so deeply.

 _It's easy to care about them when you don't have to face them._ He was familiar with his own brand of hypocrisy; he had felt it every single waking moment since the damnable war started: the hypocrisy of claiming that "all were one," feeling it in his very spark from the moment he had first taken the Matrix, yet still giving orders to kill and subdue Decepticons on a daily basis. The reality of war had kept him from connecting too deeply to his sense of empathy for the Decepticons. Cruel, then, that he was only allowed to feel for the Decepticons as his people once an entire universe separated them. He regretted that he hadn't been able to say anything to Megatron before the end. He regretted that Megatron would now have to meet a foreign enemy, one that had no shared history or inclination for mercy.

So Optimus raised his optics to the sky and prayed that the Decepticons would make it through their conflict alive. He prayed for their victory, and for their numbers to be large enough at the end for them to rebuild their society. He prayed for the impossible-- that Megatron would tire of violence and settle for rebuilding society rather than continuing his conquest in the name of Cybertron.

And that was all he could do.

  
  
  


Optimus shared his evening rations with Ratchet. The old medic had installed himself in one of the hospitals the day it had been reconstructed, and over the past few decades of rebuilding, he had spent the majority of his time either putting together the hospital's administration or teaching soldiers who had decided to lay down their arms in favor of healing.

"It feels good," Ratchet said. For all the gruffness in his voice, his face was more relaxed than Optimus had seen in millions of years. "I can finally get through multiple shifts without expecting at least one person to die on my welding table."

"Really? You're not revved up to be back in the field with a pounding fuel pump, bracing for an explosion while you're trying to weld someone back together? Are you sure you're not going to get rust in your joints from such a slow-paced life?"

Ratchet knocked him on the shoulder with the edge of his cube. "I've always been too old for that slag, Prime. I've lasted this long, and I can keep going for as long as it takes to get this place in shape." He eyed Optimus keenly over the edge of his cube. "You seem to be doing better yourself."

"Oh really?" Optimus took a sip, mentally checking his active processes and the status inputs from his frame. He didn't feel particularly different; maybe he was a bit lighter-sparked than usual, but that could easily be attributed to his company rather than any great change in himself. "Why do you say that?"

"Oh, you spend just as much time brooding and driving alone as you usually do, don't get me wrong." Ratchet smirked knowingly as Optimus gave him a wounded look. However, his amusement faded into something more earnest as he continued, "You've been spending more time with other people recently, instead of sticking to your Primely routine of isolating yourself for the greater good and the Autobots' dreams and all that slag. And yes, I can see it in your diagnostics whenever you come in for maintenance. You're healthier than you've ever been-- happier, too."

"That's not happiness, Ratchet. That's just being able to get through multiple recharge cycles without being woken up to deal with a miniature crisis."

"Same difference." Ratchet waved his hand. "Peacetime has been good for you, no matter how hard you try to spin it otherwise."

"As long as there's plenty of work to do, I'm fine."

"Uh-huh. I guess a few decades of peace isn't enough to cure you from that damn martyr complex." Ratchet raised his optic ridges. "Why don't you forget about working and go have some energon with Megatron? He'd probably appreciate you extending the offer first."

Optimus blinked. "Megatron?"

"Yes, yes. It was nice chatting with you, but I do still have work to do. These exams won't grade themselves." Ratchet immediately shooed him out of the room with a threatening jab of a datapad that he had materialized out of nowhere. "Go do something nice for yourself."

A few minutes later, Optimus stood in front of the hospital entrance, his cube still half full in his hands, and just watched the stars glimmer in the sky. It was funny; the constellations were the same here as they were in his own universe. But for once, the thought of home didn't bring with it twinges of anxiety or regret. He was happy to just exist in the moment and savor the quietness. There were lights in the windows of the nearby buildings-- another type of constellation, marking the signs of a new life being built for his people, old and new. He was alone, but it was a clean kind of solitude.

He finished his cube and dropped it in a nearby waste receptacle. He was freshly fuelled and not at all lacking in recharge, and the night was still young and full of promise.

Maybe he _would_ go and find Megatron.

Like always, Megatron was there as soon as Optimus needed him; they ran into each other outside of the mess hall almost as soon as Optimus approached the entrance, and after a few moments of pleasantries, Megatron broached the topic.

"I hope you weren't planning on retiring for the night. There's something that I want to show you, and it will take some time to reach it."

"I'm wide awake. Lead the way," replied Optimus.

Megatron transformed, and Optimus did the same. Then Megatron sent him a set of coordinates with directions over comms, and they began their journey.

It turned out that the place Megatron wanted to take him was a location in Iacon that hadn't been rebuilt yet. The Autobots and Decepticons had been sorted into multiple groups, each one assigned to reconstruct a different part of the city, but the focus had been on quality of infrastructure rather than quantity. The coordinates led to a place that was yet untouched by reconstruction; it became much more difficult for Optimus to keep up with Megatron's flight, as the streets were choked with rubble and debris. When he spotted yet another dead end, Optimus commed, [How much longer will it take to reach this place?]

Megatron banked and flew back towards Optimus, transforming midair and landing with a powerful yet graceful thump on top of a pile of rubble. "I've been leading you through the paths with as few obstructions as possible. It's going to be another hour at least if we keep up this pace."

Megatron eyed him. Then he put his hands on his hips and smiled casually. "Unless you trust me enough to let me fly you there?" Even in the darkness he looked rather impressive; the white of his plating was striking paired with the blue shine from his biolights and his optics.

Optimus realized he hadn't responded for several seconds now. He reset his vocalizer, cutting off the faint stream of static, and said, "Only if it wouldn't inconvenience you."

"Not at all." Megatron smiled wider and slid down the hill towards Optimus. “Do you want to?"

Optimus nodded.

Megatron circled the rest of the way and wrapped his arms tightly around Optimus’ waist. Megatron's thrusters roared to life, his engine called, and his wings transformed.

Optimus didn't even have to think in order to jump in perfect sync with him, their combined force sending them high into the air. If his weight impeded Megatron's flight at all, he didn't show it; their ascent was smooth, and so was the way Megatron turned in the air and flew straight towards their destination.

The sight of nothing but empty air below filled Optimus with giddiness. He had performed plenty of low-altitude jumps before, but he had never had the chance to be carried by a flight mech for purely recreational purposes. There was no one around them for miles; there were no objectives to be captured, no danger of violence to sully the mood. Optimus spun his tires and laughed into the wind that whistled across his audials. Megatron's energy field warmed Optimus’ body like sunlight, and he wasn't afraid.

The end of their flight came all too soon. [We're here,] Megatron said, and began a wide, circling descent. Optimus studied the cityscape and quickly picked out a pattern in the ruins below. The steel and concrete foundations formed massive circular buildings that orbited around each other like a solar system map. If he stretched his imagination, he could barely make out places that might have once been crystal gardens or fountains.

[Careful, keep your knees bent while I land us.] Optimus obeyed as Megatron brought them to a running halt. With the wind noise no longer filling his sensors, Optimus finally noticed how hot Megatron's plating was running, and how his engines thundered in the complete silence of the ruins.

"Are you sure carrying me wasn't a strain for you?" Optimus asked suspiciously. He stepped out of Megatron's arms as gently as he could and turned to face him with his hands on his hips.

"I'm sure," Megatron rasped, mirroring Optimus' pose. "I've had to carry mechs for longer distances during the war."

"I'm sure you have. And maybe on the way back, I'll return the favor and carry you instead."

Megatron laughed. His wings reset to a neutral position and he cleared his vocalizer with a lingering smile. "Okay, follow me."

Neither of them turned on their lights as they walked; Optimus still had night vision modules in his helm, so he simply activated them and followed Megatron. He hadn’t experienced a silence this complete since before a time he could remember. Only their own footsteps and engines disturbed the stillness; the moment was timeless, liminal. Optimus followed Megatron a little more closely, brushing his wing occasionally.

At last they stopped in front of a pile of debris, the surrounding skeletal frames of buildings as dreary as any other. Megatron vented out long, then pointed. "Do you see that window there?"

Optimus followed Megatron’s gesture all the way to a particular shattered hole in the side of the building. He reset his optics, but it was exactly as nondescript as the rest of the ruins around it.

"This place was a university before the war. That exact room was where I lectured when I was a professor."

Optimus didn't answer yet. Megatron stared into the distance. When he continued, he spoke slowly, as if he was weighing every word before vocalizing.

"It's been a long time since I was just a math professor. Even though I knew what I would be taking upon myself when I decided to lead the rebellion... I've become such a different person, done so many things, that I don't know if that old me would even recognize who I am now. But I still wish that I could have those times back, in a way. Not because I want to be exactly who I was before, but because I just want to be...something different, the sum of all the parts I couldn’t be because of circumstance."

Megatron turned and reached out. When Optimus offered his hand, Megatron clasped it between both of his own. "We've spent a lot of time together, rebuilding Cybertron. And I know that you understand exactly how I feel. Wanting to return to something you haven't had for a long time, but not knowing how. Not knowing if you can." He ran his thumb along the backs of Optimus' fingers. "I took you somewhere important to my past so that I could tell you about the future."

Every circuit in Optimus’ body hummed with attention. His vision refocused, coming into detail with edges as sharp as glass. He opened his mask and waited, tracking how Megatron’s optics searched his face for several seconds before he spoke again.

"More than just my future, what I want is for you to be happy in yours. I want to see you living every day because it makes you happy, not because you feel you must for the sake of being strong for everyone else. I want to see the kind of mech you'll become once you feel you can finally lay down your arms and rest. And I... want to be a part of your future, every single moment of it. Your smile, your wisdom, your kindness, are all part of what I consider my home."

Megatron let go of Optimus' hand and pulled a datapad out of subspace, holding it out with his head bowed. "I made this for you. There's a switch on the side to turn it on."

Optimus waited an extra few seconds to take the datapad from Megatron's hand in order to make absolutely sure he wouldn't drop it from his trembling hands. _Is it a...poem, maybe?_ Megatron had already said so much, so Optimus wasn't sure what to expect as he thumbed the switch.

The screen lit up in an instant. Blooms of color came to life, lighting up in elegant spirals of shifting color. The pattern made him think of the delicate veins in the leaf of a plant, or perhaps the perfect irregularity of a crystal geode The more Optimus stared, the more details he saw in the illustration.

"There's more, if you just touch the screen," Megatron murmured, between the data pad and Optimus' face out of the corners of his optics. He raised his hand as if to do it himself, but curled his fingers and dropped his arm instead.

Optimus did so. The screen went dark, and then another fractal appeared, this time in black and white. The shape was far more abstract, and every time he focused on one section, the other parts seemed to shimmer slightly in the corner of his vision. It reminded him of just a few hours before, when he was drinking his energon in front of the hospital and enjoying the sight of the stars.

"Megatron, I..."

Megatron's hands cupped his own trembling ones, keeping them wrapped tightly around the edges of the data pad. "There's one more," he said, finally looking into Optimus' optics. Whatever he found there seemed to embolden him, and he smiled waveringly as he swiped across the screen.

For a split second after the screen went dark, there was no light except the blue of their optics and the stars above. The darkness was a secret sanctuary that guarded the preciousness of this moment. Optimus' spark felt like it would fly out of his chest if he didn't keep venting as deeply as he could.

Then the final fractal lit up. Its colors were made of red, blue, and silver, with a few dashes of yellow-gold. The pattern was gridlike, but no less beautiful for its simplicity.

Tears streamed down Optimus’ face and he didn't care. He couldn't hold back anything, not for a single moment, as he subspaced the datapad as quickly as he could without damaging it and threw his arms around Megatron's neck, sobbing. "No one has ever," he began, and choked into static. "No one-- I can’t--"

Megatron pulled Optimus' helm against his shoulder, then held him tightly as he wept, accepting everything Optimus had thought was shameful to show so openly.

At last Optimus gathered himself well enough to speak again, raising his helm to look into Megatron’s optics. "I don't know what I could ever give you that would be equal to this."

"Ah, but we have plenty of time, don't we?" Megatron slowly leaned in and nuzzled along the vents at Optimus' cheek, smiling. "I can wait. Whatever you think of will be marvelous." He paused. "So... would you say yes to my courtship?

Optimus reached for the Matrix out of habit and found it missing. This was entirely his choice, he realized. No call from the spirit of his people, no inherited legacy to cleanse of its stains. Just himself, and what he wanted.

And what he wanted was...

"The future you talked about," Optimus whispered. He brushed the smooth metal of Megatron’s cheek with his thumb, half-expecting to wake up from a dream at any moment. "You really want me? Even...as I am now? Someone who doesn't even know what to make of himself, much less what he can give back to you?"

Megatron leaned into his touch. "Optimus. The only thing you need to give to me is _you.”_

Optimus inhaled sharply. All coherent thoughts dropped out of his processor. He pulled Megatron in and kissed him wildly, not caring about the inelegance of his motions, only that Megatron's hands pulled him in by the waist as he kissed back just as hard, fitting their lips together in just the right way that made Optimus' spark sing in his chest.

Optimus pulled back, unable to keep kissing due to the smile pulling at his lips. The future was bright, and free, and full of promise. “Yes, Megatron. I accept.”


	5. A Shadow Falls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many of you readers have been worrying about the Decepticons' status since the last Megatron POV section. I am pleased to finally let you know how they've been doing.

[Glorious news, Lord Megatron!] Starscream's voice over comms was more shrill than normal. It was hard to tell if he was excited or terrified. Megatron tried to pursue the thought for a moment-- reading Starscream's behavior was always of vital importance-- but his processor stuttered, system resources forcibly rerouted from tactical processing to focus on the alerts from the white-hot pain in his spark.

Megatron closed his fists on one of the few remaining edges of his berth that he hadn't clawed into scraps and muted his end of the line. Then he hunched over and groaned, letting some of his pain spill out through his cries.

He had just been visiting his quarters to retrieve something-- he couldn't even remember what-- and the pain had come upon him so suddenly that he hadn't known what it was at first. One moment he was walking through his room, and the next he was writhing on the ground clawing at his chest and the memory of wires wrapped around his spark.

The worst of the pain passed as soon as it came, but Megatron was still barely able to stand without his expression and posture visibly contorting, so here he was-- waiting at the mercy of his own traitorous frame to become functional again.

[Lord Megatron!] said Starscream, again. His voice was still manic, but it was now colored by impatience. [The briefing on my lab work is soon, yes? I did not finish my experiments early to be kept waiting like this!]

[You will wait until it is time, Starscream!] The lingering pain made it easy for Megatron to snarl the words as if he was furious rather than in agony. [Stop deafening my comms. I am busy!]

Starscream made a noise of disdain; his side of the comm terminated a moment later.

Megatron rested his helm against the side of his berth.  _ It's not real. I...am free. I have been free from his hold for years now. _

The damage to his spark chamber had been repaired as soon as a qualified medic could be spared after that first disastrous battle against the Autobots. There had been some lingering pain, but considering the nature of the damage, that was to be expected.  _ This  _ pain was completely new. If he had been permanently damaged somehow... If he were to die during the most critical turn of the war, when the balance of power lay on a knife's edge...

"No," he growled, and forced himself to his feet. Even if he was injured, he would fight through it, and if some cure needed to be found, he would find it. There was no time to spare for worrying.

The locks to his quarters clicked; the doors whooshed open. Megatron turned and saw Soundwave standing in the doorway, a blaster in one hand.

"Lord Megatron: in severe pain," he offered as a terse explanation.

Megatron grunted. His spark still ached like the inside of his chest plating had crumpled inwards, but the pain had faded to tolerable levels. "There is a new complication to my injury at the hands of Prime." He spat the name with fresh hatred. Oh yes, that was it-- that was exactly the anchor he needed to stand stronger on his feet. The memory of humiliation was fresh, and so was his anger. It was a comforting weld over the pain in his spark.

"Soundwave: can administer examination if discretion is desired."

"Later," Megatron said. He checked his chronometer and found that his briefing with Starscream was a minute overdue. When he walked from his quarters, Soundwave followed him.

"What is his current state?" Megatron said. A few moments of walking was enough to have the pain subside completely, and he could finally focus well enough to plan ahead for the report from his second-in-command.

"Starscream: eager to impress with his work, unlikely to attempt subversive activity. Status among Decepticons: significantly reduced."

Yes, even if Megatron had been inclined to punish Starscream for the failure of that disastrous battle against the Autobots, he wouldn't have had to lift a finger to do so; the welds of the Decepticons' wounds had barely cooled before the angry mutters had begun. Everywhere Starscream went now, he was met with cold optics and disdain that was only suppressed through the sheer force of discipline. Everyone knew whose plan had led to the Autobots’ victory The Air Commander pretended not to notice, of course, but he also spent far more time in the laboratory than he had in millions of years, doing what he could to earn his honor back for the cause.

Starscream's smirk was strained when the two of them met him in the laboratory; it showed a little more teeth than usual as he looked from Megatron to Soundwave.

He gestured towards the complicated series of tubes and metal devices occupying the main work table, all of which culminated in three small dispensers that dripped glowing liquid into energon cubes. "I believe I have finally found a counter agent to the Autobots' poison!"

Megatron frowned and raised an optic ridge.

Starscream ignored the display and continued, "There will be no need to sabotage their energon supplies once I refine these three prototypes. This liquid here can be vaporized and stored in canisters to be deployed in gas form. It is harmless to any mech that hasn't ingested the poison-- meaning us, obviously-- but if any mech under the influence of the poison were to ventilate this gas..." He made a dramatic gesture. "Upon reaching their fuel tanks, the gas will react with the poison to cause an ignition! The Autobots will burn from the inside out if they try to use the poison in battle against us!"

It was actually a brilliant idea: not just effective, but brutal, painful, and extremely visible, which was just the sort of tactic that made Megatron's spark hum in hateful anticipation. He didn't let his approval show beyond the flashing of his optics, however; he merely made a noncommittal noise and said, "You said these are three  _ prototypes. _ How do you know it isn't going to explode inside of  _ our _ fuel tanks as well?"

"Because the gas only reacts with the compound that's created from the mixing of energon and the poison," Starscream said petulantly. "Regardless, it is only a matter of time before I succeed. I will have small samples available for use before the month is over, and then we can send the formula to our supply colonies to be mass-produced."

Megatron nodded tersely. "Unless you have any other pertinent information to report, this briefing is over."

There was an echo of pain in his spark that was slowly building. It wasn't quite  _ pain, _ but it pulsed like a second spark in his chest, and Starscream was occupied enough with his experiments to be of no danger. Megatron wanted to investigate this pain, and he was going to do it  _ now. _

Megatron was already halfway turned on his heel when Starscream responded in the negative, so he left without another word.  _ Your workroom, now, _ Megatron thought towards Soundwave.

Less than half an hour later, Megatron was in one of the private medical labs, laying on a berth as Soundwave plugged him into the medical console. The phantom sensation in his spark was gone, but Megatron still had to fight to relax his fists and lay his palms down on the cold metal.

An access request pinged on his HUD. The console wanted to access the problem area, and that meant...that meant opening his spark chamber again, right now, opening his core to where even the most cursory blow would--

Megatron drew the cold air into his ventilation systems. At the same time, Soundwave leaned into his field of vision and put his hand on his shoulder, energy field pulsing relaxation and comfort at him.

Yes, this was one of the deepest and most secure areas of the ship, and he was here with Soundwave, loyalist and friend no matter what had ever faced them. It was safe.

Megatron approved the access request and kept venting as slowly as he could while the console triggered his chest plating open. The pain he had braced for didn't arrive. The air around him quickly became warm from the agitated energy of his spark. Soundwave came back to the side of the berth with the scanner in hand, and began the inspection.

It would take some time for the program to scan all of Megatron’s vitals, so he was left with the opportunity to think about the war, again.

The truth was that, however much his desire for revenge against the Prime ignited his spark, this Optimus was not  _ his Optimus. _ He was from a different universe, with what background Megatron could only guess at-- that is, if it was relevant to Megatron’s war, which it wasn’t.

And that was exactly the problem. There was no shared history between them; these Autobots knew nothing of functionalism, or the revolution, or even Megatron himself. The dark Prime and his Autobots were a threat, yes, but so foreign that they might as well be of a different species altogether. Their new war was nothing more than a fight for dominance: extinction or victory. That was the same way one would eradicate a strain of rust plague, not the way Megatron wanted to fight a war for the future of Cybertron.

And the false Prime treated it all like it was a game, no less! In his optics, Megatron was nothing more than a new toy to play with and discard. He had no respect for the way Megatron had almost literally crawled from the dirt all the way to his current lordship and power. He did not listen to Megatron’s words and respect them.

Not the way Optimus did.

An odd pang went through Megatron’s spark, though not of the physical variety. He wasn’t prone to sentimentality, so he took the time to carefully trace the thread to his source. Eventually, he realized that it was the passivity of the entire scenario that bothered him. It would be one thing if the Prime had perished at Megatron’s hands; that would have come about by an equal fight, might against might.

Except he hadn’t gotten the choice, and neither had Optimus. One moment they were fighting, and the next, Optimus was gone. Gone forever, most likely, just as permanently as if he had actually died. They hadn’t even said anything in particular to each other before the end. It had been just another battle.

Megatron still wasn’t certain why it bothered him. One of the few constants of the universe was that death had no significance. Good, evil, skilled, weak, brave, cowardly-- no matter the mech, death could for anyone at any time. It was senseless, it had no rhythm or pattern in the greater scheme of the universe, except that most of the time it could be kept at bay through strength or wit.

The time had simply come for Optimus Prime and the Autobots to vanish, by whatever obscene mathematical odds had caused two universes to align.

Megatron hadn’t felt this disappointed by someone’s passing in a long time. Perhaps not since his first few kills in the arena, back when he still felt like he was performing some sort of desecration by wasting sparks for others’ entertainment. The nostalgia was almost wistful...and then Megatron brushed it aside, because he hadn’t stopped his war to mourn for the dead in a million years, and he wouldn’t start now. Not when there was still work to be done.

"Examination: complete.” Soundwave’s voice was a refreshing return to reality. “Residual scarring of spark chamber and associated surgery: present. However, no abnormalities present that could cause pain of high severity. Further information: required for diagnosis."

Megatron scowled. His tactical processor was already computing the pain episode into battle simulations. His odds of surviving a fight against Prime-- hell, against a mere foot soldier-- were abysmal if such an episode were to strike him during combat. Just as potentially disastrous was what might happen if one occurred during daily operations: during inspection, in the mess hall, on the practice field, during a meeting with high command...

It was a weakness. He had a new weakness that he couldn't control or predict, all while the balance of war was on the blade's edge. Megatron's lip curled with fresh hatred for the impostor Prime and the games he had played with his spark. And even more galling was that it was an effective strategy for crippling him. He wondered whether the Prime had intended for this to happen, or if it was just another way for chance to open another chasm under Megatron’s war path.

"Soundwave," he asked, low and harsh. "Do the medical archives not have information on spark damage that could explain this phenomenon?" Part of his processor began to mentally tally all the medics in charge of keeping this database updated, calculating the odds on who would be punished for this failure of information.

"Negative. Sections on spark damage: primarily concerned with lethal and near-lethal damage." Soundwave passed Megatron a datapad which he quickly flicked through, barely reading each labeled file before moving to the next. They were exactly as lacking as Soundwave had said. "Reiterate: no abnormalities present that could cause pain of high magnitude. Suggestion: install monitoring program to capture vitals. Necessary information: might only be obtainable during a pain event."

The datapad cracked in Megatron's clenched fingers. He handed it back to Soundwave before he damaged it further. "Very well," he gritted out. "Install the program."

He calculated, and recalculated, and calculated again. With only one event to base data on, there was no way for him to predict what exactly had triggered the pain. It would be easy enough to keep to his quarters for a few days without the Decepticons suspecting anything, but that inactivity was not Megatron's way. He refused to act out of passivity. If this pain was to be a permanent fixture of his functioning, he would have to learn to handle it while enacting his daily orders as normal.

Something cold settled in his spark and over his mind like a sheet of ice. Uncertainty meant death, and Megatron would not die any time soon. He had survived so many near-death experiences that the risk of it was as mundane as a morning cube of energon. All he had to do to make a more solid plan was wait.

Oh, how he despised waiting.

The program finished installing, and Megatron ejected the medical cords from his ports as soon as he received the all-clear notification. His chest plating locked shut and he swung himself off of the berth in one smooth motion. Despite his racing thoughts, Megatron pulsed a wave of gratitude and confidence at Soundwave through his energy field before he moved to leave the room.

“Lord Megatron,” Soundwave interrupted. “Reminder: Soundwave leaves to a new stationing location soon. If Megatron has no urgent affairs, Soundwave: requests company before leaving.”

Soundwave spoke the truth; Megatron had simply forgotten his impending departure due to the more pressing issues of the past few hours. He mentally reviewed his schedule for the next few hours and decided that some time spent for personal leisure would not be a waste.

Megatron turned back around, and for the next hour he and Soundwave took their energon rations together. The other mech played an ambient, tuneless song from his speakers-- one that Megatron recognized as a synchronizing mechanism Soundwave used for the cassettes. The soothing acoustics still vibrated pleasantly in his audials and against his plating, slowly smoothing away his lingering agitation and unease.

Later, Megatron accompanied Soundwave down to the hangar where his transport ship waited with a rumbling engine and the faint glow of energy from its thrusters. Mechanics bustled about making preparations, and the rest of the soldiers in the unit were filtering into the hangar in small clusters; the rush of activity and associated noise left Megatron and Soundwave in relative privacy in the spacious area.

Neither of them spoke for a while. Then Megatron said, "We will have vengeance against them soon."

Soundwave tipped his helm in acknowledgement. "Lord Megatron: strong, capable as ever." He raised his fist to his chest and pressed it to the center of his chest. To an outsider, it would look like an ordinary salute. But between the two of them...

Megatron considered for a moment, then copied the gesture. "I trust this mission in your hands, Soundwave."

"Soundwave: trusts the cause in Lord Megatron's hands."

In unspoken agreement, Megatron stepped back at the same moment Soundwave turned and walked up the loading gear of the ship. It ratcheted back into the hull of the ship, and the thrusters roared into life. The warning alarms rang, hailing the final minutes before the hangar would be depressurized and the hull opened for liftoff, so Megatron walked away without a backwards glance.

  
  
  


After Megatron left the hangar, he took his time walking through the ship back to his personal quarters, daring the spark pain to rear its head. He stopped at the energon storage rooms and gave an impromptu interrogation to the quartermaster on duty, grilling the mech on every withdrawal and addition until he was practically shooting out sparks by the time Megatron went on his way. He stopped at all of the firing ranges and sparring areas, lingering long enough to have the soldiers working harder, but not so long that they became too distracted by his presence and started showing off in order to earn a sliver of his favor. He even took a few detours to comb through the back hallways of the ship where he knew mechs liked to go to catch a few extra minutes of break time during duty shift, and successfully sent half a dozen soldiers scrambling back to their posts with barked commands. Everything was in order, just as Megatron liked it to be, and by the time he reached his quarters again, Megatron felt almost completely normal: indomitable and in control with disciplined followers ready to go into battle at his command.

And go into battle they would.

Megatron slapped the surface of the command table, making it glow to life in an instant and project the last battle plan he had reviewed. The Autobots had sent the Decepticons into disarray during that battle mere decades ago, but Megatron had decided to take his revenge in a more discreet way instead.

The impostors clearly hadn't brought the infrastructure from their universe along with them, meaning that they had been too busy trying to recover outposts from the original Autobots’ own security measures. There was no time for them to be pursuing open combat without the advantage of home bases...and so, Megatron had taken advantage.

He flicked upwards, bringing forth the last report Soundwave had submitted. He had been able to slip through Autobot cyber-security in the brief window before they had installed new security systems, and the report confirmed Megatron's most urgent suspicions.

The Autobots were focusing most of their resources on acquiring not only more energon, but the reagents for the poison Starscream had so disastrously bestowed upon them. No doubt they were planning on direct engagements, attempting to overwhelm the Decepticons through sheer strength. Megatron grimaced; that wasn't anything new, but the super strength the Autobots had at their disposal was feasible enough of a strategy that he had directed spec-ops to engage in sabotage.

Saboteurs planted bombs in mines and detonated them; assassins were sent to kill key overseers; guerilla forces struck energon surveying ships and transports. All of this only slowed the Autobots' efforts even more, buying time for Starscream, Shockwave, and the other scientists to manufacture a counter to that poison. Certainly, having spies drop antidotes into their energon supplies was already a functional strategy, but one should never take risks in making certain that the enemy was truly ground to dust beneath their heel.

Megatron smiled grimly. He wanted the Autobots to  _ hurt _ in every way he could cripple them. The war had been cold for decades, but he could sense the warning tremors coming like a dormant volcano coming to life.

Vivid images of ripping the Prime's spark out of his chest filled Megatron's processor, but he only allowed the fantasies for a moment before forcing his fury down. Impatience had been his mistake during that last confrontation. He just had to inflict his vengeance through a thousand cuts for a time, and then... then the pincers would close around the Autobots' necks.

Megatron's spark throbbed.

His hand shot up to his chest. He hunched over instinctively, bracing for the pain, all systems jumping to maximum alert level and flooding his wires with power.

Nothing happened. His spark simply...hung in his chest, wavering somewhere on the edge of discomfort.

Megatron stayed still for many long minutes, ventilations slow and shallow, waiting to see if it would intensify.

He stood up slowly. Nothing changed.

He glanced around the room and saw it was large enough to fit his purposes. With a light grunt of effort he shoved the command table to the far corner of the room-- still no increased pain-- and stood in the center of the cleared space. He drew in a deep breath and transformed.

No change. He transformed back. No change. He changed back and forth again, and again. No changes to the level of discomfort.

He was still running hot with battle instincts, so he raised his fists and shadow-sparred for minutes on end, beginning with jabs and kicks at first, then moving to more strenuous maneuvers like flips and rolls. His sensors were on such high alert that every tiny anomaly in the hum of his spark felt as huge as a wave crashing through an ocean, and at last he threw his hands down and stood still, venting deeply. At last he had to conclude that this instance was benign, and nothing he did was negatively impacting his status.

The most important fact was that he could still fight.

The most alarming fact was that he had no solid metric to predict the time or intensity of the next pain.

He allowed himself a moment to run his hand over his face and hold it for a moment.  _ Wait. Analyze the diagnostics from Soundwave's program, and adapt. _

Another part of him snarled,  _ I'm going to make him pay for this. He will suffer dearly for every moment he strung me up by the spark-- _

_ Wait. Plan. Be patient. _

The tips of his fingers dug into his cheeks. The longer he stood idle, the worse the agitation became. Something inside of him coiled up like a spring, and Megatron knew it wouldn't settle until the Autobots were eradicated.

He forced himself to keep reviewing reports for another hour before he succumbed to the need for motion and stormed off to the nearest sparring range to take out his frustration. Through the haze of heated servos, spent shells, and fists pounding into practice dummies, Megatron’s spark continued to throb.

  
  
  


When the war erupted, it began with a warning shot.

The Nemesis received the distress call from one of the nearby Decepticon outposts by sheer coincidence, just before they reached the space bridge in the area to patrol the next sector.

Only halfway encrypted, like it had been interrupted mid-broadcast, the message read: "Autobot infiltrators-- origin unknown, ship not detected-- numbers unknown, small squadron likely, infiltrated base undetected--"

Megatron chose to join the shuttle going down to the planet's surface, along with Starscream-- who had been far too insistent on the necessity of his presence-- five trines of seekers, and a single ground division, essentially no more than a scouting party. Another shuttle with more soldiers hovered high in the atmosphere, on call to provide reinforcements.

Spongy-looking forests made intricate patterns in the landscape, at least until the foliage had been blasted away to clear room for energon mining and processing facilities. There the trees stood jagged and bare like calcified lightning bolts, providing no coverage for a stealth approach.

Megatron, plugged into the ship using his wrist port, surveyed the Decepticon outpost through the ship's underbelly cameras. It did not look at all like the site of a surprise Autobot ambush; he could see exhaust puffing from the great towers of the power plants, and-- he zoomed in closer-- there were actually soldiers rolling back and forth between the power plants and the command center, hauling energon, raw materials, and other supplies from spot to spot. The walls of the command center were untouched, if made of grimy, patchwork materials.

Either the commander of this outpost was exceptionally efficient at re-establishing schedule, or there was something Megatron did not yet know.

"Starscream," he growled. "Send your scouts to fly lower and observe the power plants. Remain cloaked, and be ready for an aerial assault!" 

He opened up a line to the command center below and barked, [Captain, report!]

Silence on the other end as Megatron counted the seconds. Then his comm crackled and a monotone voice answered. [Lord Megatron. All operations proceeding as normal.]

[What of the distress signal? And the Autobot infiltrators?!]

A long pause on the other end of the line. Megatron tightened his fist and imagined throat cables collapsing in his grip. [The infiltrators retreated after a short confrontation. None of the energon operations were damaged or sabotaged. All is in order.]

_ Slag, _ Megatron swore internally.  _ You're either lying to me, or you're an Autobot using a Decepticon's voice. _ Either way, it seemed like his initial plan to survey the outpost in person would still proceed as ordered. [Report to the landing field immediately.]

The few minutes it took to land passed in a blur for Megatron; he stormed out of the ship the second the loading hatch dropped down, followed a short distance away by Starscream. [Starscream, report.]

After a few moments, Starscream commed him back; all clear, down to the last scout. Megatron scowled and redirected his attention towards the captain in front of him: a red mech, tank alt-mode heavier than his own, whose designation Megatron was too angry to bother remembering.

The mech saluted him and bowed. "Lord Megatron. This outpost is running in top condition, at least as much as can be expected after an incursion. May I--"

Megatron stared into his optics. The mech was looking at him, yes, but in a slightly jittery way. His optics never quite looked into Megatron's directly, and every time he tried to capture them, they flickered away in almost microscopic twitches.

"Enough!" Megatron barked, interrupting the captain's jabbering of pleasantries. "The distress call said that the Autobots infiltrated the base. Show me the damage right now or I'll have you disassembled for lying and wasting Decepticon resources!"

Something in the captain's bearing snapped into place, and his monotone was more crisp as he said, "Right away, Lord Megatron." He turned and walked away into the open doors of the base.

Megatron narrowed his eyes, but followed. He sent a private comm to Starscream: [What do you notice about that captain?]

[Are you referring to the simpering foolish behavior, or the obvious lack of more than a dozen neural circuits in his processor?]

[Does this situation not seem the least suspicious to you?]

[Oh it does, but this is either an amateur attempt at a takeover, or something far more intricate.]

Megatron parsed all of the details of the encounter and came to only one solid conclusion. He sent a comm to the shuttle above to send down the reinforcements, then began to silently warm up his cannon. [This outpost couldn't possibly have the manpower to assassinate me, much less you and dozens of additional troops. A mutiny would be suicide.]

Starscream didn't respond to that, but he had keen enough senses that he was no doubt warming up his own weapons as well. Megatron scowled. Whatever this captain was about to spring on him, he wanted it over with already.

His tactical processor was already running at high alert, so it didn’t take him long to identify the anomaly as he walked through the base: it was quiet. Anywhere soldiers gathered, there was supposed to be the noise of small talk, joking, orders being given and taken. Here, the only noises were of engines running at idle power levels, ringing footsteps throughout the halls, and the occasional sound of doors opening and shutting. Not one voice rose in conversation. And every Decepticon who passed Megatron saluted in the same stiff way, optics tracking him long after they would have reasonably gone back to their business.

Megatron was ready to explode by the time the captain stopped before a closed door and said, "Everything you need to know is in here, my lord."

Several things caught his attention at once; the sensory information was as clear as crystal, entering his processor as if in slow motion, yet everything happened in the space of a single ventilation.

The captain palmed the door open. Megatron took a step forward, and his foot slipped by microns on some sort of wet residue. His gaze flicked downwards just long enough to catch a glimmer of cleaning fluid in a crack in the floor. Still walking through the doorway, as his gaze travelled upwards, it caught on the pool of energon flowing across the floor.

Then he saw the bodies.

They were thrown into a haphazard pile that stretched from corner to corner of the room, but positioned so that all of their insignias were visible, creating a sea of impossibly contorted limbs and gaping wounds in armor that showed unmoving gears and pistons. All of the faces-- not all of which were still connected to their bodies-- were wide open with horror or contorted in pain. The grotesque sight was punctuated by the quiet, almost serene dripping of energon as it joined the pool on the floor.

Megatron whirled and slammed the captain against the wall, pinning him with one hand and shoving the barrel of his fusion cannon under his chin. "What. IS. THIS?!"

The mech's vocalizer fizzed and clicked. Megatron snarled and moved the barrel away from where it had been crushing the captain's vocalizer, shoving it under his chin instead with enough force to dent. The plating beneath Megatron’s hands was burning so hot it was almost painful, but he didn't care; it was like a candle to the inferno of his outrage.

"Optimus Prime...sends a message," the captain croaked.

Pain lanced through Megatron's chest. He hid the flinch with another snarl and tightened his grip on the soldier. The captain's face was lit now by the light from Megatron's cannon, and the edge of his jaw was starting to deform like putty from the heat. But his expression remained fixed: optics wide and staring through Megatron, the rest of his features frozen like he was watching some distant horror.

_ "The time has come for me to exert my will over this universe." _ The captain trembled like a leaf in Megatron's grip, and his cooling fans sent a high, thin note ringing through the air with their speed.  _ "You will receive no mercy or treaties, so fight well and earn your continued existence." _

Megatron dropped the captain. The mech slid down the wall until he was sprawled half against the wall and half on the floor, still shaking violently.

_ "The Autobots belong to me. Play well, or your Decepticons will too." _ The captain tore at the plating over his abdomen, feet drumming an irregular rhythm against the ground. "Oh Primus-- burns!" 

His expression froze again. Then he rattled out,  _ "Optimus Prime...sends...message... The time has come...f-for m-me to ex-ex-exert..." _

"Megatron!"

The shrill voice broke through Megatron's trance, and the punch to his shoulder reactivated his combat protocols; he barely kept himself from shooting Starscream when he turned around.

"The same thing is happening all over the base. All seekers report the local forces dropping to the ground in the middle of their tasks." Starscream's voice became weaker, and his optics trailed back and forth between Megatron and the mech still spasming loudly on the floor. "They've all been poisoned."

Megatron angled his arm backwards and fired. An explosion of heat washed through the room; then there was only the plinking noises of warped metal, and then silence. He didn't look away from Starscream as he growled, "Look upon what you have made."

He stormed past Starscream without another word, leaving the Air Commander frozen on his feet.

Every thump of his feet against the floor sent another jolt through his spark. Megatron wanted to scream and rage and tear the entire wretched base to the ground.

[All units, execute the remaining soldiers and gather the bodies for autopsy.] Megatron called in the salvage crew to descend for landing as well, and another message to the Nemesis calling for new mechs to man the station. He came across very few living bodies as he stormed through the hallways, but he shot all of them through their sparks without hesitation. Better that they be executed at the hands of their lord and comrades than die like animals thrashing in the mud.

Finally, Megatron walked out of the building into the open air. He vented as deeply as he could, purging the scent of death from his insides until his systems returned to normal temperatures. Suddenly he realized that his hand was hovering over his chest, where his spark still pulsed with dull pain. He clenched his fist and thrust his arm back down to his side, then opened another comm line.

[Lord Megatron, what do you require?] Shockwave's voice was as unperturbed and smooth as ever. At least there was one member of High Command that wouldn't be losing his head any time soon.

[Open up all of the files you have on mind control,] Megatron demanded. [I have a project for you that must be completed at all costs.]

  
  
  


_ "The Autobots belong to me. They follow me and give their bodies as I see fit." _

Megatron's fingers tightened and loosened periodically on the arms of his throne as he considered the situation.

_ Mind control. They have access to mind control that makes shadowplay look tame. _ This was complete subsuming of consciousness on a massive scale, with no apparent need for a mechanism of control, which the Prime could apparently maintain even at a distance from his subjects.

Megatron’s fingers tightened again, half-involuntary due to the surge of intensity in his spark. The pain was already becoming familiar. Could it be that the Prime had tortured his spark in preparation for this plan? Could it be that Megatron himself was a ticking time bomb, and would turn on his own troops as soon as the Prime pulled the trigger?

No, that couldn't be right. His medics had checked him,  _ Soundwave _ had checked him, and all of his systems were intact, from his body to his processor. The second reason was that the Prime had spoken eagerly of their contest, as if he hoped to drag this out for as long as possible; clever he might be, but an act as decisive as controlling Megatron and having him somehow destroy his own forces wasn't on his agenda. He wanted to play with them, play with  _ Megatron. _

The Prime had had Megatron right in the palm of his hand and done nothing to him. The sheer audacity of it… His spark hummed at a higher frequency, and Megatron refused to name the feeling before he locked it down.

He was Megatron, and he would not be made a slave to anyone of this universe or not. He had torn down an entire planet's government to free himself and the Decepticons from oppression, and he would not fall to it again. Not after a million years of being made strong in the crucible of war. This was a dangerous game, and a threat the likes of which they had never faced, but it could be overcome.

_ Whatever universe the impostors came from had their own Decepticons, _ Megatron mused.  _ If they were able to survive a war against these Autobots, then we can as well. _

Unless they hadn't survived. Unless this was the very reason the impostors had been sent to this universe. However, the Prime had spoken of his universe's Decepticons in the present tense... No, that knowledge was impossible to find, and thus had no bearing on the current situation.

Slag, how he desperately needed intel on the Autobots' capabilities. The lack of knowledge about the enemy extended in both directions. Megatron resolved to send a notice to the intelligence division immediately. He also thought longingly of Soundwave; the communications officer had trained his subordinates well, of course, but there was nothing as reassuring as having someone by his side who understood the turn of his processor and his spark without words. Nevertheless, Soundwave didn't need Megatron’s constant supervision to know what would be beneficial to the war effort. He had probably already considered the same things Megatron was at this moment.

Just as Megatron rose from his seat for another impromptu inspection of the ship, the voice of one of the communications officers jolted him off of his carefully laid mental track. "Lord Megatron, we are receiving a communications request from Theophany, identified as Dai Atlas of Crystal City."

A timely reminder that when one sanctimonious mech disappeared, there were always others left to take their place in annoying Megatron. He scowled and sat back down, then nodded to the officer once he had made himself presentable.

Dai Atlas looked no more pleased to see him than Megatron was, and the other mechs in the background of the call were equally stony-faced. "Megatron of Tarn, Lord of the Decepticons," he began coldly. "There is a situation here, and unfortunately we have no better way to find an explanation than by contacting you."

"I have no interest in the affairs of neutrals, nor have I ordered any actions to be taken against your people. Explain your purpose before you waste more of my time."

Dai Atlas sighed irritably; a lesser mech might have pinched the bridge of his nose, but the former senator remained composed as he said, "You have been fighting the Autobots for some time now; thus, you would know best if they had...changed tactics. As of yesterday, we received a small fleet's worth of refugee ships from an unaffiliated neutral colony, all of whom claimed that their settlement had been ransacked by mechs wearing the Autobot brand."

Megatron's optics flashed. "And what did the Autobots take from them? Energon?"

"Captives," Dai Atlas said flatly. "Anyone who was unable to escape by ship was disabled and taken to Autobot transport ships. According to the refugees, their entire colony is nothing but smoking ruins now."

_ Cannon fodder, _ Megatron thought.  _ Or test subjects for the Prime to use his mind control on before moving on to us. _ "When exactly did this occur?"

"Two and a half weeks ago."

That was  _ after  _ the demonstration on the Decepticon outpost.

Prime was about to make his move.

Megatron sprang out of his throne and demanded, "Where is this colony planet? Where did the Autobots go afterwards?"

The mechs standing behind Dai Atlas looked between each other with mixed anger and unease as their leader responded, "I have always considered Optimus Prime to be a questionable leader at best, but if you think this event will cause me to lead my city to aid in your warmongering--"

"Cut the power!" Megatron snarled. "Unless you would like more of your precious neutral colonies to all be taken by the Autobots and enslaved, you  _ will  _ give me as much intelligence on this attack as you have, because the Decepticons will be the ones fighting the Autobots while you live in luxury pretending this war is none of your concern!"

He ventilated deeply, spark aching. Several of the officers on the command deck surreptitiously stared at him from the corners of their optics, and Dai Atlas was now scowling in open disgust.

"As for the Autobots themselves," Megatron said, settling back in his throne, "The Optimus Prime and army that you knew before are no longer in this universe." Completely deadpan, he proceeded to outline the entire affair from its beginning-- omitting the details of his capture and torture, the disaster of their first battle, and the finer details of the annihilation of the outpost-- all the way to his present hypotheses about the nature of the Prime's mind control.

Ordinarily he would have never considered divulging tactical information to neutrals, nevermind one so scornful of the war as Dai Atlas, but unusual times called for unusual measures, and if there was a chance for Megatron to wrest something beneficial out of this conversation...

"That is an outrageous story," Dai Atlas said after a long moment of silence. "It is so outrageous that I may have no choice but to believe you, because you couldn't possibly expect me to believe that story if it were a lie."

"Your possession of common sense makes this conversation very expedient," Megatron shot back. "The information, now."

The visual projected onto the screen changed to a flickering "standby" notification for a solid few minutes. Then it flickered back on and Dai Atlas said, "It will take at least a day to compile all of the testimonies into a report that would be useful for you."

Megatron fought the urge to roll his optics. Dealing with neutrals was cumbersome; living such lives of ease as they did, they couldn't measure up to militaristic standards of reporting. Every circuit in his body burned with impatience, which only marginally obscured the ache of his spark. 

"In the meantime," Dai Atlas continued, “What we  _ can _ immediately supply you are the sector and coordinates of the colony’s location.”

Megatron gestured impatiently. A few seconds later, a communication console beeped, and the officer sitting in front of it clicked a few keys to display a map of the galaxy, zooming in on the relevant area.

Everything went still around Megatron.  _ That’s Soundwave’s station. _

_ No. _

"Cut the transmission!" Megatron roared.

"Megatron, what are--" Dai Atlas’ voice was cut off.

Megatron flung himself out of his chair and strode to the communications console, looming over the officer there to jab the button himself and snarl, "All soldiers, make yourselves battle ready. The war has begun anew!"

  
  
  


The ground around the outpost glinted with tiny flashes of light reflected off of metal. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, so clustered together in some places that they formed an unbroken carpet over the bare dirt. Now they knew what had become of the neutrals the Autobots had kidnapped; the dingy frames were far more colorful and lightly armored than anything a Decepticon or Autobot would wear. It seemed the neutrals had been used as cannon fodder for the main assault.

"Fly out!" Megatron shouted. Row upon row of seekers transformed into alt and descended from the hangar, circling in the beginning motions of their deadly dance.

Megatron ground his teeth. This frame didn't have enough maneuverability in the air; from this high up he would only be a hindrance to the seekers. He waited in the hangar with the rest of the ground troops, cannon warmed up, standing wide in a confident stance that betrayed none of his growing agitation. His cannon arm was pointed out and away from him, while the other he kept strictly behind his back in order to fight the urge to touch his chest. There was no pain yet, but every small shift in his spark made him brace internally, wondering if this was going to be the time it began.

Megatron burned with anger-- at himself for being outmaneuvered, at the Autobots for existing, at the faceless universe they had come from-- and determination to make the Autobots howl. A single canister rested heavily in his subspace, one of a handful that Starscream had been able to manufacture with the resources aboard the Nemesis. The key to ending this here and now, if Megatron kept his wits about him.

As it was, he watched the heavy throng of mechs fighting below. His spark soared with pride at the fact that there were two distinct groups; the insignia were of course indistinguishable at this distance, but it was clear that the Decepticons had not fallen yet despite their inferior numbers.

The transport ship landed at last, and there was no more time for conscious thought. The door opened and Megatron roared out orders to advance. Soon his entire being was centered in pure sensory input, tactical processes, and physical movement. Engines rumbled and weapons transformed out of subspace. A storm of noise surrounded Megatron, and he was the eye; every Autobot that stood before him fell with gaping, glowing holes in their plating or their chassis crumpled inwards like foil.

"Hail, Megatron!" The cheers of the besieged Decepticons rang in Megatron's audials as he and his forces finished carving a path towards them. They all fit together like pieces of a well-oiled machine. For the first time in the long decades of ceasefire and scheming, Megatron felt the old fire ignite in his spark, and he felt alive and powerful.

The seekers countered the Aerialbots, and once the Decepticons no longer had to shield themselves from attacks from above, the tide of battle began to turn. Megatron left a group of soldiers to fend off the Autobots outside and ran deeper into the base.

Last time, the Prime hadn't needed to be present for his mind control to work. He might not be here. But Megatron knew, he just  _ knew _ that he would be here to gloat. His entire body hummed with heady rage and vengeance. This was his territory, these were his people, and he had come in time to remind the Autobots that both of them belonged to  _ him. _

The hallways of the base sent the echoes of battle ringing from all directions, which was why Megatron didn't hear the mech descending upon him until the disturbance of air reached his sensors. On pure instinct, he ducked and fired a low power shot, tracking it slightly ahead of the mech's trajectory. A shrill squawk met his audials.

He knew that voice.

"Ratbat?"

Another shriek, pain mixed with rage, and Megatron rose to his feet in time to dodge another swoop from the mini-cassette. He didn't even try to comm the mech. The fact that he was attacking him,  _ Megatron, _ was proof enough of his mind being broken.

Prime was here.

"Subdue Ratbat!" Megatron shouted to his soldiers, and broke into a run down the corridor, alone.

If Ratbat was under the Prime's control, then the others could be, too.

Soundwave could be under his control.

Megatron’s spark whirled with anger and fear. He rounded every corner ready to take the head off of any Autobot he saw, and did just that to every single one whom he intercepted.

An unearthly howl brought Megatron stumbling to his knees before he could master the instinctive panic. _ Frenzy. _ He forced himself to his feet and ran through the knots of paralyzed soldiers, just in time to be caught by the splash of energon as the red-and-black cassette drilled straight through one of his comrade's fuel tanks.

The mech dropped to the ground. Megatron's optics met Frenzy's behind the visor. There was no recognition, just hollow animal bloodlust. Frenzy brought his drills to bear on Megatron.

Megatron leapt, passing directly above Frenzy as the mech lunged forward. He landed and grabbed the mech from behind by the shoulders. His audials stabbed with pain from Frenzy's shrieks, but in a short set of motions he crushed the cassette's shoulders and ripped his arms off. They fell to the floor in a clatter on either side, the shrill whine of the drills fading once the wires of the torn arm sockets stopped sparking. Megatron silenced Frenzy's screams by bashing his helm against the wall, sending him into emergency stasis.

"Someone cuff and gag him," Megatron ordered one of the soldiers who was still struggling to her feet. "We need survivors."

_ Test subjects for Shockwave, _ the more brutal part of him corrected, but now was no time to remind the Decepticons of the fate of their fallen kin.

Megatron paused just long enough to vent out hard and sharp, steam gusting from his vents and mouth alike as he purged the excess heat.  _ Hold back,  _ he tried to remind himself, but the battle rage was too strong. The fear was too strong. He hadn't yet found Soundwave. He hadn't yet found--

"You," a rich baritone drawled.

Megatron whirled and fired without a second thought, cursing the fact that his fusion cannon was only charged to half-capacity. Even before the harsh light from the energy blast died away, he knew that his target was still alive.

Sure enough, Prime stood there unscathed. He signalled to the pet Autobots standing behind him, and they clambered away to join the fighting elsewhere. It was just the two of them, as it should be. The light of the Prime's energon axe danced across the polished surface of his mask in time with his optics, red embers that glowed with eagerness and amusement.

_ "Prime!"  _ Megatron roared. In the instant before their weapons met, he recognized that the Prime was smiling behind his mask.

"I am glad to see you are well," Optimus said after a flurry of blows. Another exchange of swipes and parries, and he continued, "Open battle is where we can truly test each other, after all."

"Die," Megatron snarled, not entertaining the mech's desire for wordplay in the slightest. He could see a glow from somewhere deep in the Prime's chest, flashing from behind his windshields.

The canister weighed heavily in Megatron's subspace. So, so close. The coil inside of him threatened to snap; cold tactics kept it held in check. First he had to create an opening.

"Mind control is a clever tactic," Megatron snapped, "but the Decepticon will is strong!"

"Idealism? I thought you were better than that." The Prime went for a low cut to Megatron's legs.

Megatron let one of his feet go out at an angle. He stumbled, then rolled. Prime's axe grazed him, splitting open the plating on the front of his thighs and missing the circuitry by inches. He slid out a few yards and fell onto his side as if Optimus had truly caught him off guard. The dark mech laughed and advanced. Megatron charged his cannon as he reached into his subspace.

"Your will doesn't  _ matter. _ No amount of sentiment or ideology can withstand my power." He took his blaster out from subspace and clicked the safety off.

Megatron shot at the Prime, who deflected it with a blast of his own. The barrel glowed again with a hum that clashed discordantly with Megatron's own fusion cannon. Megatron hunched over, the cannister pressed between his hand and his torn plating.  _ Close. Close. _

Optimus stopped walking. "I'm not going to come within range of you," he said condescendingly. "Do you think I'm going to let you close enough to sweep out my legs from under me?"

He fired. Megatron whirled and threw.

The shot clipped the canister and exploded. Megatron's world was filled with two things: billowing cyan gas and the burning pain of an energy blast hitting his shoulder.

He heard stumbling footsteps. A stalling engine, then a shout of alarm that rose in pitch to a scream.  _ Clickclackclick _ of vents shuttering.

Megatron smiled. Too late.

The footsteps pounded away. Megatron leaped to his feet and ran after them. "You're dead, Prime," he half-screamed, half-laughed, full of manic glee. "Dead!"

His jubilation was short-lived. The Prime disappeared through a hole in the wall that used to be a doorway, and from the adjoining hallway, Ironhide slammed into Megatron like an avalanche. He pivoted Megatron and slammed him against the opposite wall. Megatron met Ironhide’s headbutt with one of his own, and the clang of their helmets left both of them reeling. Blind and deaf, Megatron roared as Ironhide's fist slammed into his abdomen and ripped out the crumpled vents. He pressed his fusion cannon against the other mech and fired; at such a close range, the pure heat was enough to have the warrior spasming against him in pain, slackening his grip enough for Megatron to throw him away with a clang.

His visual feed was still glitching, slag it all, so he couldn't chance looking into the room Prime had disappeared into. It smelled of acrid smoke, and the screams of pain emanating between choked vomiting were extremely promising.

[I need backup!] Megatron wrapped his coordinates with the comm and fired it off at a universal Decepticon frequency. [The Prime is about to fall!]

Megatron spared no more time for words; Ironhide had recovered and immediately launched himself at him to grapple again. In a flash, the hallway was filled with flashes of energy weapons and battle shouts as soldiers from both factions found the fray.

The very walls of the outpost rumbled and shook from the violence of the battle. Megatron snarled in Ironhide's face, but the black-plated warrior's stoic expression didn't waver as he deflected Megatron's blow and aimed a shot at his chest. Megatron pivoted and grabbed his gun hand, pulling him forward and throwing him right into the sights of a Decepticon.

It was about killing Prime. Cut off the head, and the entire mechanism would thrash about without direction.

He turned and growled when he saw a wall of Autobots with energy shields up covering the entrance to the Prime's room. A blur of white and teal flashed behind them; Ratchet, coming to tend to his wounds. The retching noises and coughing from the room had stopped. It could mean that the Prime had succumbed. It might not. Megatron drowned his rising anticipation with focus, throwing himself to the side and ducking into a hole in the wall to take cover from the Autobots' fire.

Mechs screamed and shouted. The air grew thick with the odor of spent gunpowder and singed plating. Megatron charged and fired his fusion cannon, battering at the line of Autobots as much as he could.

The next time he looked out, he saw the Prime behind his soldiers. A trail of energon dripped behind Prime as he limped next to Ratchet. Megatron fired a shot, but an Autobot jumped in front and took the shot for them on his energy shield.

Megatron snarled.  _ Why won't he just die?! _ The bait, the shot, it had all gone perfectly. Of course Prime had shuttered his vents just in time-- of course he had been able to purge enough of his tanks to avoid being completely combusted.

Megatron's fury was lessened by degrees when the Prime turned to face him from behind the wall of Autobots. His mask was down, and his sculpted face was twisted into an ugly grimace. Energon dribbled down his chin, his cheeks were warped and sunken inwards, and flickers of fire were visible in his mouth as he rasped out, "Well done, Megatron. But you should tend to your own before you pursue me."

The Autobots activated their shields just as the ceiling exploded downwards. Megatron looked up and saw Sky Lynx hovering above, the Aerialbots circling in a mad swarm around him and deflecting the seekers.

"Open fire!" Megatron and his soldiers traded fire with the Autobots, but they were outnumbered, and the Autobots easily laid down suppression fire and kept them ducking behind doorways and fallen debris as the Prime was carried into the air. Megatron saved his shots, charged his cannon to the point below overheating, and fired.

It hit one of the Aerialbots, blasting a hole straight through their entire torso through which Megatron could see the sky beyond. The body fell in a shower of molten metal and stray limbs onto the Autobots below.

Prime disappeared into Sky Lynx's hatch.

The firefight resumed, but the Prime's words finally sunk in. _ Tend to your own. _

Ratbat and Frenzy, mind controlled. Ravage, Rumble, and Laserbeak, all unaccounted for. Soundwave, unaccounted for.

Megatron's spark twisted.

He grunted and leaned on his knees for a moment. Then he gave two terse orders to the Decepticons sharing the cover with him. One of them sent him a ping with coordinates; within moments his soldiers provided covering fire for him as he dashed down the hallways to the communications room as fast as his feet could carry him. The pain increased with every step. So did the fear.

The noise of the Autobots retreating faded into the hallways behind him; the communications room was deeper in the base, away from where the mechs were running towards the exits. The fact that he was alone pinged faintly at Megatron's processor. He started charging his cannon in preparation. Had to be ready for anything.

Right. Right. Straight. Left. Down the hallway to the sealed doors. Punch in his master keycode with a finger so unsteady that he fumbled it, cursed and punched the wall next to the console, and entered it again. Right arm starting to shake from power coursing across heated circuits.

_ Soundwave. _

The doors parted. Megatron scraped against the edges in his haste, sparking fresh pain from the scorch wound on his shoulder, but it barely registered. He tucked the arm against his chest-- hand clutching his aching spark-- and kept running.

Turn the corner.

Soundwave stood at the communications console, his back to Megatron. Files upon files coursed over the screen, progress bars filling rapidly and disappearing to be replaced by more. Intelligence. Battle plans. Schematics. Resource lists. Every piece of information the Decepticons had passed through Soundwave's hands at some point, and he was feeding all of it-- all of it-- to  _ them. _

_ We are dead if the Autobots get that information.  _ The certainty of it struck Megatron's whole being like lightning. Fear, agony, despair, anger. A flurry of calculations passing by in an instant.

Soundwave turned. His posture was stiff, dronelike. He said nothing. No recognition, no justification.

Megatron raised his cannon and fired.

His elbow buckled and gave out. Overheated circuits malfunctioned and sent a power surge before snapping apart. The shot, intended for the console, went wide by mere degrees.

Soundwave's chest disappeared in a blinding light that imprinted itself on Megatron's optics long after it faded.

Megatron’s knees gave out. For seconds, eons, he just stared and watched Soundwave collapse on the smoking console. His visor's glow went out.

_ No. Not possible.  _ Soundwave, he-- he couldn't just-- he had always been by Megatron's side, always, he wasn't, he couldn't be-- Megatron was glitching, Prime had to have done something to him, this  _ wasn't possible, he hadn't, he would never-- _

The frantic energy from his processor activated ancient instincts. Megatron disengaged the cannon and scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees, half collapsing with every lift and drag of his numb hands. The pain from his spark threatened to leave him curled up on the floor, but he refused to stop, even when it drowned out every other tactile input from his frame.

_ Soundwave. Soundwave. _

Megatron surged forward with the last of his strength and grabbed Soundwave across the waist, pulling him onto the floor where he caught his helm with one hand before it hit the floor. "Medic," Megatron croaked. His optics trailed inexorably downwards from Soundwave's cracked visor and mask to the mess of wires and half-melted metal lumps that composed his torso. "Need to get you-- a medic--"

Soundwave's hand rested over the insignia on Megatron's chest. The blue-plated fingers curled. A few broken shards of his mask and visor fell inwards, revealing a sliver of his cheek, the corner of a ruby optic that stared directly into Megatron's.

"Soundwave." Megatron brought his hand over Soundwave's, holding it tight to his chest. "Soundwave, I’m--"

Soundwave let out a breath of static that rose into a garbled noise. Another piece of his mask fell away, and his mouth trembled, forming a word Megatron couldn't read. The fingers around his insignia clenched hard enough to dent.

Then they went slack. Soundwave’s arm went limp, dead weight held in Megatron's hand. The light of his optics extinguished.

"Damn it, Soundwave!" Megatron clutched the limp hand tighter to his chest. "Don't you dare--  _ don't you dare die! _ I won't allow it! SOUNDWAVE!"

The weight in his spark bowed him over. The front of his helm came to rest against Soundwave's. Still he raged against the dying of the light, even as the terrible truth made itself known.

"You're always there for me, Soundwave. You can't just  _ die.” _ Megatron's voice wavered pathetically, breaking into glitched clicks every few syllables. "I wasn’t aiming for you.”

_ Stupid fool, you were too reckless, you didn't think, idiot, idiot, look what you've done! _ "I'm sorry. Soundwave, I'm--"

His mouth moved, but only choked static came out. His tears ran in rivulets across the curve of Soundwave's visor and were captured in the cracks.

Megatron raised his helm, tears streaming down his face, and howled, no longer knowing words.


	6. These Years of You and Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking an entire month to update. I was participating in NaNoWriMo this year and working on other projects, and I had no time to spare to even start editing this chapter until the very end of November. This is a fairly fluffy (and mysterious) chapter, so I hope it's worth the wait.
> 
> This chapter is 2k words longer than Chapter 5, which held the previous record for the longest chapter in this fic. As always, if you have time to comment, please do so even if it's just to quote some lines or parts you liked. It would mean the world to me after working so long and hard!
> 
> Also, the Plug and Play tag comes into play this chapter. Enjoy!

Megatron's wings adjusted with a quiet whirr as he reset his stance, clasping his hands behind his back. "I'm ready for the transmission," he told Soundwave. 

Soundwave tapped a few buttons on his console and gave Megatron a thumbs-up.

"Calling all Cybertronians," Megatron began. "Long lost kindred, the war is over at last, and Cybertron is ready to welcome you back home."

The holo-screen in front of Megatron played through several brief recordings: New Iacon as filmed from above; Autobots and Decepticons peacefully walking through the re-paved streets, surrounded by pristine, benevolent towers that glimmered in the sunlight.

"You may be asking yourselves how this came to pass. Two centuries ago, I and my Decepticons created a portal to cast the Autobots into another universe. The result was that a new group of Autobots arrived here-- ones that were equally tired from their long war, and who generously dedicated themselves to rebuilding Cybertron as if it were their own home. We have spent all of our time rebuilding Cybertron and restoring its environment to livable conditions."

Another sequence of images and videos played. The mech standing behind Soundwave didn't have time to look at them closely, however; Megatron had reached out one hand to beckon him closer. 

He slowly walked into the field of view of the holo-screen and took Megatron's hand. Black-plated fingers wrapped around his and squeezed comfortingly, Megatron rubbing a soothing pattern on the back of his partner’s hand.

A light in the corner of the device blinked-- the recording had returned to the two of them.

“My name,” the newcomer said, “is Orion Pax. Fellow Cybertronians...though we are not of the same origins, I welcome you as my own people, and invite you to return home and share the new world we have created."

He and Megatron took a half-step forward and bowed. "Cybertron, out," they said in unison.

The transmission ended, and both of them sighed in relief.

Megatron cupped Orion's cheek guard. "Your optics are glowing so brightly," he said.

Orion leaned his helm into Megatron's palm. "I've been wishing to welcome my people home for so long," he whispered, squeezing his partner's other hand. "It feels even better to finally say it out loud."

They rested their helms together, humming a low, pleased note in unison. Megatron nuzzled Orion's mask in the way he always did to ask for a kiss.

Orion was just about to trigger his mask open when cheerful music of bells and chimes began playing loudly from somewhere in front of them.

Megatron jerked away. "Soundwave, stop that!" He said indignantly, his own optics flashing with embarrassment. "We haven’t even courted for two centuries yet!"

"Soundwave: suggests new recording for transmission. Megatron and Orion: demonstrating unity very effectively. Speech: unnecessary?"

Orion and Megatron very deliberately stepped away from each other. "I take your point," Orion replied in as dignified a manner as he could. "Megatron, do you still need me here, or may I return to my tasks in the archives?"

"Yes, we have everything we need for the transmission to be edited and then broadcast. Don't work yourself too hard, dear."

"I won't, I won't." Just because he could, Orion opened his mask and  _ did _ give Megatron the kiss he had silently asked for. "I'll see you this evening."

Orion emerged from the grand archway of the city hall a few minutes later. The utilitarian, military-style grid of Iacon had transformed over the past century into a true city square. Spotless panes of glass in the buildings around reflected the sunny, cloudless sky above, and the pavement was decorated with colored stone. Orion recognized all of the vehicles driving past or flying above by name, though not always by appearance; nearly every soldier had opted for reformats to remove their integrated weaponry and heavy armor. Some of them had scanned new alt-modes and repainted themselves.

Orion transformed and hit the streets. He had returned to a more streamlined, speed-oriented vehicle mode, similar to the one he had had so long ago as an officer. It was a little troublesome to have to follow driving laws and marked roads, but such was the trade-off of having functional infrastructure again.

He arrived at the Grand Archives in under an hour. He took his time to greet the other archivists, such as they were; not many had the patience for such meticulous work. Ultra Magnus was among those he greeted, only diverting his attention from his work long enough to give a short wave as Orion passed him. Orion himself was privileged enough to have a small office of his own in which to work… though his justification for reserving such a space was for private reasons rather than practical. He sat on the step-ladder that served as his chair and began his work.

The most monumental task of Orion's new occupation was sorting through the sheer volume of information the Decepticons had at their disposal. For one, the demands of war had led them to make a large number of scientific advances, so even with the guidelines Megatron had given him for the old archival sorting system, Orion had to spend a significant amount of time going through all of the reports and sorting them into the relevant categories. Some of them were going to need approval from what remained of High Command before being officially released to the public archives. Not all of the records were suitable for civilian perusal.

As Orion looked at the next file, he saw it was some sort of device related to processor function: a module that could be installed directly into the helm, and when enabled would… Orion squinted at the unfamiliar terminology. Something to do with altering electromagnetic fields and masking code. The author of the document had written in the margins, "Prototype unsuccessful: tests resulted in loss of higher funcion. Alternatives to Matrix control field neutralization still needed."

Orion flicked the report and its diagrams into a category he had set aside for "Dangerous/Classified Documents," then sighed and leaned back in his chair. The wartime files were a particularly dark presence on his mind today, and that brought back the familiar specter of shame hanging over his shoulder.  _ He _ had volunteered to archive the Decepticons' files. He had led his own war, and seen the creation of devices that were equal to these in ruthless practicality. A job as calm as archiving should have come easily to him.

Unbidden, Megatron's whisper came to the front of his processor-- a memory from one of many private hours spent together.  _ “Everything you have to give is valuable, Orion.” _

_ One step at a time, _ Orion told himself.  _ It wouldn't hurt to do something else for a little bit until I can focus again... _

The Decepticons had other files, of course. They had been normal citizens with trades and professions before the war began, and now that it had ended, they had returned to those old professions. So too had many Autobots turned to professions that no longer required violence. Slowly, Orion had approached as many mechs as he could to ask them if they would be willing to spend a few hours with him in the archives transcribing their knowledge. It was tedious work, but it was all they could do when all of the libraries, archives, and schools on Cybertron had been destroyed long ago.

Orion dared feel a surge of hope in his spark. Once the neutrals returned, they too would have data pads and files saved from the old Cybertron or compiled during their long exile. Many of  _ them  _ would have to learn new trades as well: society only needed so many doctors, engineers, scientists, and construction workers. That was why Orion was doing important work: he had found a new purpose, and he was going to help others find theirs as well by providing them with knowledge. Avoiding the files from the war didn't mean that he wasn't performing his duty. It didn't mean that he was weak. What he was doing right now was still valuable.

  
  
  


Orion had been working for a few hours when he registered a distracting bit of background ambience. He disregarded it and continued working. Then there was a commotion at his office door.

He looked up and saw Starscream crammed into his doorway, stuck due to his wings and the many packages he was balancing in and under his arms. 

"Orion!" He sang. "I have something special for you! Several somethings, in fact, but one of them has been particularly long-awaited!"

"Oh-- you found the T--?" Orion cut himself off and said in a whisper, "You found the parts for me?" Orion belatedly stood and helped the seeker with his bundles, but made sure to close the door behind Starscream.

"Yes, yes, but not just those! Did you forget?" Starscream opened his subspace compartment and triumphantly presented the Matrix. "I came to deliver this back to you!"

Orion gaped behind his mask. He had-- he had genuinely forgotten about the Matrix. It had been almost two centuries since he had turned it over to the Decepticons, and as he reviewed his memory files-- construction, salvage, logistics, his courtship with Megatron, taking up the archiving profession-- he had simply had more pressing things on his mind.

"I really would have given the Matrix back to you sooner if I could have, but reconstruction came first over personal research! Once I did enough tests to determine that your Matrix wouldn't do anything suspicious if left alone, I was caught up in all the other projects I had to finish. I simply had to designate the Matrix investigation as low-priority once I knew that it wasn't immediately dangerous."

"I don't mind, Starscream. I don't mind at all." He belatedly reached out and took the Matrix from Starscream's hands, feeling awkward all of a sudden. "And the other things you had for me?"

Starscream walked to the nearest empty desk and set his parcels on top, chattering away. Orion couldn't exactly just leave the Matrix laying on a shelf, so he opened his chest and inserted the Matrix back inside of its housing. The long-disused circuits immediately lit up with warmth. Orion went still, waiting to see what else would happen. But nothing did.

"This right here is the CPU chip, which is definitely the most important part of your little project-- and the one I thought would be most important to get in a covert way for you, hm?" Starscream winked at Orion. "Since this is a very specialized component that could be easily recognized by  _ professionals.” _

Orion nodded. Starscream went through the rest of the items in the bundle, which were all helpfully labelled and stored in foam compartments that kept them easily organized. "I didn't think you had any knowledge of electronics," Starscream said after he finished his explanations. "How are you planning on building this?"

"I'm...working on it," Orion said bashfully. "I've already collected a few files on the basics of electronics, but I haven't been able to find anything more detailed than a user's manual as far as blueprints go, so I haven't exactly been able to start building it yet."

Starscream made an interested noise in the back of his vocalizer. "Well, I can help you with that too. Give me a week--maybe two, I might be rather busy-- and I'll have asked around enough to find someone who can teach you how to build."

"Thank you, Starscream." Orion stepped closer and clasped the seeker's hand in both of his. "This project means a lot to me. If there's anything I can do to repay you, please tell me and I'll do it immediately."

Starscream waved off Orion's gratitude with a flustered flapping of his wings and a "Anything for a friend," then took his leave.

Alone in his office, Orion touched the spot between his windshields. Strange, for him to have forgotten so easily about the Matrix when he had been carrying it for more of his life than he hadn't. But now that it was connected to his systems again, the Matrix felt curiously...inert. It hummed more like a piece of his own engine than as its own entity with that curious presence of consciousness-but-not-consciousness.

_ It's likely due to being in another universe, _ Orion thought. It was his first time carrying the Matrix since he had woken up here for the first time, so it was obviously going to feel a little strange at first. Orion trusted that the Matrix's curious inactivity was not Starscream or Megatron's doing, despite how initially angry he had been at their distrust. _ Maybe it will come back after some time connected to me. _

_ Or maybe it won't. _ There was no precedence for this sort of scenario. Maybe the Matrix's power had been severed by the transference between universes. Maybe he would never be able to hear its guidance again. Or maybe the Matrix had simply decided that he no longer needed it.

Did he  _ have  _ to keep carrying the Matrix? He didn't even call himself Prime any more. The Autobots, along with the Decepticons, had officially disbanded a decade ago. There was no need for a Prime in this world. He could ask Starscream to put it back in containment, but...maybe it would be safer in his keeping. It would certainly be more appropriate than leaving it to gather rust in some secure compartment in the Nemesis.

The longer Orion stood frozen in front of his door, the more quickly it dawned upon him that all of the answers to his questions-- if they would ever be answered-- couldn't be found by him worrying over them. He ventilated deeply, then exited his office and buried himself in the day's work again.

  
  
  


Sensory information came in scraps and flashes.

_ Exhaustion. Pain. His frame ran hot and puffed smoke from exertion. Spark-deep weariness. An entire field of bodies. Orders rolling heavily off of his tongue. Want to get away from it all, want to go away, sit in a dark room and stop thinking. Too many lost. So many more deaths to come in the future if he made a mistake. _

Something was wrong. Why was this wrong? It felt so familiar and real.

_ Not ready… It’s my fault… No time... _

No, this wasn't right-- the war was over. He was Orion now, not Optimus. He hadn't had to stand on a battlefield and order salvage crews out for bodies in-- in a long time.

Yes. There was a berth beneath him, the extra padding a luxury he hadn't had during the war. His processor sluggishly reoriented itself, terminating recharge protocols one by one. Orion felt like he was trying to wade out of coagulated grease.

He finally came all the way online. For the space of an optic flicker, Orion even felt the old weight of battle armor and integrated weaponry on his torso. He held one hand up to his face, and the sensation vanished.

"Nnngh," Orion groaned, helm falling back against his pillow. Where in the world had that come from?

He tried to go back to sleep after that, but recharge eluded him. Even with his engine in low-power mode and his optics offline, his processor simply wouldn't quiet down.

Orion bolted upright. Maybe it was the Matrix--? He turned his sensors inwards, but the artifact remained as subdued as it had been the past afternoon. However, when he checked his system logs, they had registered an uptick in energy from the Matrix during the last few minutes of his recharge.

He sighed and disengaged his mask to rub his face exhaustedly. Recharge was no closer than before. Orion sat for a while longer, then did the only thing he could do. He opened a comm line and pinged it with a request for a voice call.

"Orion," Ratchet grumbled when the link came online. His voice held its usual gruff mannerism, so Orion couldn't really tell if the other mech had been recharging or was still on the late shift at the hospital.

"Ratchet, I think something is wrong with me. Or something has happened with the Matrix."

Ratchet didn't respond for a second, and Orion could practically feel the invisible wry stare coming from the miles-away hospital. "Okay, let's start with the most important thing. What are your symptoms?"

Orion described the surreal dream, and the Matrix's effects on his logs. "It's been decades since I last had one of those dreams, Ratchet. Especially since one has been enough to wake me in the middle of the night. Do you think the Matrix could be reacting oddly to being in this universe? Starscream said that it was safe, but..."

"Could be something to do with another universe. Can't imagine a Primus-given artifact ever making anything simple." His old friend sighed. "Orion, let's look at this from a more concrete perspective. I'm not exactly a licensed psychologist, but have you considered that this 'Matrix vision' could just be a perfectly normal symptom of trauma processing?"

"But I'm fine. I've never been happier in my life."

"And not all processor functions operate at a conscious level. In many mechs who experience high levels of stress for an extended period of time, symptoms of trauma often don't manifest until after the stressful event ends. The systems finally have a chance to process all that data, and the built-up pressure explodes all at once, even if it's disproportionate to the environment."

The logic seemed sound enough, and Orion didn't feel inclined to argue. Still, he asked, "But why  _ now?" _

"Oh, I don't know," Ratchet drawled. "Didn't you and Megatron just make a public announcement on every galactic frequency we know welcoming the neutrals back to Cybertron? Doesn't that sound a little bit like an upcoming major life change that could be increasing your stress levels?"

"...I suppose it does." 

"Well, there you have it. Think of it this way: maybe one of those neutrals will be a therapist that you can arrange some appointments with, eh?"

Orion huffed. He lingered on the line, unsure of what else to say, but not ready to leave the other's distant company yet. "Say, Ratchet... you said you're not a licensed psychologist, but you would you happen to have any free time to come by the archives so I could copy--"

"Slaggit, Orion," Ratchet groaned. "You just woke up and you're already thinking of your archives?"

“Sorry, sorry. I can ask you about it some other time.” He made a few more apologies, and Ratchet grumbled a little longer, and then they both hung up.

Orion lay in his berth for a while, pacified by his old friend's words. The intensity of his anxiety did seem rather silly, now that someone had actually talked it through with him rationally. He wondered how long it would take for him to be able to stop having such worries at all. Logically speaking, he knew that the answer was probably years upon years; as Ironhide had told him, four million years of civil war didn't fall away so easily. Orion simply couldn't shake the feeling that he was  _ wrong _ somehow.

He didn't want to go to sleep any more. He wanted to talk to someone about how he was feeling. And he knew exactly who to go to.

Megatron lived in the same building as Orion did, but a few stories higher. They hadn't quite progressed to the stage of sharing quarters, and neither of them had mentioned it to each other yet. Orion didn't know if Megatron would be in recharge-- it was that precise hour that was too late to be a reasonable bedtime, but too early to be a reasonable waking time-- but he had the feeling that his presence would be welcomed regardless.

Orion tapped on Megatron's door at a polite volume. Sure enough, it only took about half a minute of waiting before it beeped and slid open to reveal the mech himself. "Orion?" He said drowsily. "What is it?"

Orion let himself inside once Megatron stepped aside. "Were you sleeping?"

"I've been in and out of recharge. I was practically awake already when you knocked, so don't worry."

All of the furniture rested against the walls except for a large, plush office chair that sat in front of a large touch screen that had been pulled down from a tab in the ceiling. On the far side of the room, the door to Megatron's room was open, and the berth inside was neatly set, but virtually untouched. If Megatron had been sleeping, it was definitely in his chair and not in his room.

"I see what you mean now," Orion said with fond amusement. And Megatron liked to get on  _ his _ case for working too hard.

"I know what you're thinking," Megatron said from behind. An instant later, Orion was jostled by the gentle smack of a wing on his shoulder. "I promise this is normal for me. I don't usually recharge straight through the night, so I just work when I can't sleep. I go to berth when I'm tired again."

He embraced Orion from behind and rested his chin on his shoulder. "Enough of that," he murmured. "What happened?"

Orion leaned back into Megatron's touch. "Bad dreams," he answered just as softly. "I'm fine now, don't worry. I just didn't want to go back to sleep by myself without telling someone about it."

"In that case, I'm happy to be here for you." He hummed. "Do you want to sit in the kitchen, or would you like to go somewhere else?"

Orion turned his helm so that he could barely see Megatron's face out of the corner of his optic. "I wasn't exactly planning on going back to my room tonight..."

"Then don't."

They walked to the bedroom together. Orion parted from Megatron's arms and reached the berth first. He hesitated for a moment, then laid down. Megatron's biolights were the brightest light source in the room, especially once he slid the door shut behind him and plunged the room into darkness.

Orion held out his hand, beckoning. Megatron took it, then gingerly sat down next to him and lowered himself onto his side. Their fingers remained tightly laced together. Orion compulsively ran his thumb over the back of Megatron's hand.

"So, bad dreams," Megatron prompted him. "They must have been  _ something _ if they drove you all the way to me at this hour."

Orion covered the back of Megatron's hand with his other one. "It was just so...sudden. I've been so happy for the past many years-- since we started courting, actually-- and then suddenly I wake up and it's like my spark is cold. For a moment, I was back exactly where I was for the past four million years. I was tired. So, so tired."

He wasn't sure how he would explain the possibility of the Matrix's involvement, or if it was a good idea to try. Orion settled on the more mundane explanation. That at least was something Megatron could help with.

"I called Ratchet, and he said that it's normal to feel these emotions so long after the fact. But I don't  _ feel _ normal." Feeling a sudden burst of inspiration, Orion asked, "Do you have dreams about the war too? Do you ever feel like you can't stop lingering on the past?"

Megatron's optics traced up and down his face. He didn't speak for a long time, and the turn of his mouth was solemn. "I don't have dreams, and I don't linger on the past. Quite the opposite, actually. I would put it all behind me completely, if I could."

"Oh." Orion's spark sank.

It must have shown in his face, because Megatron quickly pulled Orion close. "That doesn't mean you're not normal, Orion. It just means you and I are different, that's all."

Orion didn't give a response, and Megatron didn't prompt him for one. They just lay together like that: Orion with his audial to Megatron's chest listening to the thrum of his engines, feeling the tiny vibrations buzz through his helm.

The clarity of thought that he had hoped for when he came seeking Megatron's company was slowly emerging. Orion traced his thoughts through millions of years of bloody memories all the way down to his spark and came across a wall. He knew that wall well; he had put it around himself long ago in order to separate his personal wants from his duty. Now, weighing what Ratchet and Megatron had said, he realized that the wall was also holding something inside. He could leave the wall intact, fall asleep in Megatron's arms, and forget about it. Or he could start prying away at the foundations and see what it was that had been locked away for so long.

"Megatron," he began slowly. "You said you don't want to linger on the past, but have you ever felt like you should?"

"I haven't. I already lived through it once; I don't want to have to relive it by lingering on it. Why?"

"I suppose I have the opposite view. I  _ don't _ want to think about it either, but I feel like I  _ should." _

"You sound guilty about it."

"I am." Orion stared at the ceiling. "I just feel... if I don't focus on the past… that it's selfish. What if I'm dishonoring all the people I failed-- the people who died because of my mistakes? Shouldn't I remember them instead of focusing so much on my own happiness?" He felt energon pooling in the rims of his optics. Orion had never questioned this terrible weight during the war. But now...

A creak of joints-- Megatron leaned over him and gently turned his face back towards him. "Are you saying that you feel like you can't enjoy peace because other people died before they could have it?"

"I..." Orion wanted to protest, but Megatron had cut to the heart of it so simply. A tear escaped the corner of his optic. "Something like that, I think."

Bearing the burden of guilt had always been a duty in Orion's eyes, back when he had been called Optimus. All those lives were ultimately his responsibility, so he should claim them as such. He had to do it, because what if he moved on too fast and made the same mistake again? What if he forgot how high the price of life was and started throwing them away casually like playing pieces? It hurt to dwell on so often, but it was supposed to hurt-- it reminded Optimus Prime of what his duty was so that he didn't end up becoming exactly as corrupt as his forebears had been.

More tears joined the first. Orion just let them fall and stared into Megatron's optics.

"Orion," he said gently. "Hurting yourself won't bring them back."

"I--"

Megatron hushed him with a finger on his lips. "Every single person who died fought for the same thing: peace. Do you think the fallen would begrudge you for enjoying the very thing all of you suffered millions of years to achieve?"

"No," Orion whispered.

"Then you have to let go of the past. Being happy in the present doesn't mean you've forgotten or moved past those who you lost. It just means that you've entered a new stage of your life-- become a different person." He caressed Orion's cheek. "Isn't that why you changed your name?"

The crack in the wall grew deeper. "I changed my name because the war is over, and the Autobots no longer had need of me as their leader. 'Til all are one," Orion recited softly. "Now all are one, and Optimus Prime… isn't needed any more."

For some reason, Megatron looked hurt. "But I thought-- that is, you've been happy all this time, as Orion. I didn't think you changed your name because you thought that you weren't needed any more. Optimus Prime may be a name, but it was  _ your _ name. You are you, no matter what name you go by."

"I'm glad you think so, and I appreciate your faith... but it isn't so simple in my mind. I know the Primacy wasn't a good thing for your Cybertron. It wasn't even good for  _ my _ Cybertron. Many of the Primes were tyrants before I--"  _ Reformed it, _ He wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat. He said something else instead. "I became Prime so that I could represent a new change for my people-- so that I could represent hope instead of fear. I only succeeded in leading half of my people in a war against the other half."

Megatron's brow furrowed, but he still considered Orion intently. He said, "In the grand scheme of history, every action has some sort of effect on the future. By the same token, not every outcome may be possible until the pre-conditions to bring it into being have been reached." He clasped Orion's hands in both of his own. "Have you ever considered that your path isn't just one long series of mistakes, but merely the path you had to take in order to get to the future you always wanted? Maybe all of your losses-- and mine, and ours-- were just the variables we had to work with. Maybe they were all for a purpose."

Orion forcefully offlined his optics, a fresh surge of tears coming forth. "So what, fatalism? They were just destined to die? Or worse, stepping stones? Necessary casualties for everyone else to get to enjoy victory?"

"No!" Megatron snapped. Orion flinched away from the tone of his voice.

"Wait-- Orion, no, I didn't mean to--" Megatron stopped, optics gazing into the far wall before offlining entirely. He vented deeply several times. "I think...there is a fundamental difference in our mindsets, and me trying to offer my own as a substitute for yours won't help you. So, may we start over? I'm sorry for snapping at you."

Orion didn't want to argue either. "Okay," he said. He reached out and touched Megatron's face, bringing the other's optics blinking back online. "It's okay. I'm sorry for making it sound like I was accusing you of-- being careless."

He let Megatron stroke his lips for a few moments. "What you said about mistakes," Orion began again. The tide was about to break over his inner walls, and he was standing in the shadow of the wave. "I just can't see them that way. A leader has to be responsible for everyone. And for every person I lost during the war..."

His voice broke, but he forced himself past it. His vocalizer rasped as he continued on in a flood. "Everyone who died-- all those people were just as important as the ones who lived-- and I was their leader, they all looked to me for guidance-- I should have done better--"

"Orion--"

The crack in the wall exploded. "There are so many of them and only one of me! Why? Why do I get to live and they don't? How could my happiness possibly be worth all of their lives?!"

Orion shoved his face into Megatron's chest and wept. After a frozen moment, Megatron's arms wrapped around him and pulled him into a sitting position, where he rocked him back and forth. Orion felt more than heard the sweet nothings Megatron whispered against his brow. Eventually, Orion’s self-repair system caught up to the ruptured energon lines, and he had no more tears left. He onlined his optics and looked at the mess smeared across Megatron's chest.

"I need--" he whispered hoarsely. He pulled away from Megatron and made a wiping gesture across his face and Megatron's chest. It was still impossible for him to look at his partner in the optics, but he was at least able to move off of Megatron's lap so that he could stand and retrieve a cloth.

Orion took it and wiped his face off. He was going to need a solvent wash; there was still energon residue in the rims of his optics and caught under the edges of his helm. He finally looked up and saw that Megatron had finished wiping his chest off with another cloth.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"Why?" Orion repeated. "I went hysterical. I didn't even listen to you when you tried to help. All I did was get upset over the same thing it's always been-- the same thing I thought I had overcome years ago."

Megatron reached out and wiped delicately at a smear on Orion's face. "Don't apologize for telling me how you feel," he murmured.

"I'll be right back," Orion said. He found the wash racks on his own and used the handheld nozzle to rinse his face in a gentle stream of warm solvent. He patted his face dry and returned to the berthroom. Megatron didn't say anything as Orion settled back next to him, but when Orion reached out and held his hand, he squeezed back.

Orion checked his chronometer. There were only three hours left until daylight.

"I can't sleep," he confessed. "If you don't mind, can we play a game of Turmae?"

Megatron hummed in consideration. "You won't be able to work very well at the archives if you don't recharge. Can you promise me you'll take the day off if we stay up the rest of the night?"

"Yes."

Orion was the first out of the door, and had already dragged out an extra chair and put the Turmae box on the table by the time Megatron emerged. He unlocked it and set up the game pieces himself.

They played the game at a leisurely pace. Orion lost, but not by a terribly wide margin considering how tired he was. Megatron had stopped going easy on him during games a few decades ago, so a loss was nothing to be ashamed of.

"You get better and better every time," Megatron said while Orion put the pieces back and folded the box back up. "One day you'll be a master at it."

Orion gave Megatron a weak smile-- it probably wasn't much more than a twitch of his lips-- but he made sure to soften his optics so that the other knew he meant it. He was too tired to speak properly. The sun was already fully above the horizon, turning the sky pale blue and pink.

"I'll put in the call to the archives," Megatron said. "You can go ahead and lay down. I'll be with you once I take care of my own business."

Orion wavered on his feet. He wanted to protest that he should make the call to the archives himself because it was his job, but... he was tired. And maybe it wasn't so bad to let someone else be responsible, especially for something as simple as a call. He shuffled to Megatron's side of the table and leaned against him.

Megatron kissed the side of his helm. "Everything will be okay," he murmured.

  
  
  


_ I made myself into a tool of war. _

_ That tool. . . _

_. . . regrets . . . _

_. . .that shape . . . perfect _

_ For destroying . . . to save. _

_. . . _

_. . . _

_. . . nothing . . . _

_ I could not lie-- _

_. . . it was a mistake _

_. . . I could have acted differently. _

. . .

_ “You’re their leader...act like it.” _

  
  
  


Orion's resolve to work on his personal project grew by the day. His spark ached deeply with the need to reciprocate Megatron's affection, and all the time they spent together didn't quite fill that void. Orion wanted something physical, proof of his dedication to Megatron that could be seen and touched. Something that would make Megatron as happy as he made Orion feel happy-- happy like nothing he had ever known.

After all, Megatron had already given him such a gift first...

Orion still carried the tablet with the fractal artwork everywhere he went. Whenever his processor started to go numb from reading electronics manuals or when his most recent attempt at assembling a component ended in malfunction, he just took out Megatron's gift and stared at it until he felt calm and focused again.

One day after the archive closed its doors and his colleagues had all gone home, Orion was working steadily on assembling a transforming component of the device when a knock suddenly sounded on his office door.

"Orion!" Megatron called cheerfully. "You're overworking yourself again! It's already dark outside!" And the door beeped with an access request.

"Ah! Wait, wait!" Orion fumbled and dropped his tools, then froze in indecision between picking them up or packing up all of the components he had been working on. "I'm-- I'm busy, it's-- very dirty in here! I'll let you in in a moment!"

He picked up all of his tools and put them away in a panic, messily shoving them in the desk next to some broken datapads before slamming the drawer shut. It had already been a minute-- Megatron was waiting outside of his door-- was it worth it to put everything away when taking longer would make him look more suspicious? Orion threw a cover over the half-assembled device on his desk, then waved open the door. He barreled past Megatron and palmed the door shut behind him.

"Hello," he puffed, leaning against the wall.

Megatron tilted his helm slowly. "Orion...what was that about?"

"Nothing." That was a terrible lie, but his mask was up, so it wasn't quite as egregious as it could have been. "I was just trying to finish up quickly so I could see you."

"Oh...kay," Megatron said, drawing out the vowels pointedly. "Let's go, then."

When they stood on the sidewalk outside of the darkened archives, Megatron turned to Orion and took his hands. "Were you planning on coming over again tonight?"

"Maybe?" Orion never really planned which nights he went to Megatron's room to sleep and when he didn't-- it just happened. Some nights he craved Megatron's company for its own sake rather than for relief from his nightmares. "I hadn't decided yet."

"Would you like to move in with me permanently?"

Orion's mouth opened, but only static came out. He rebooted his vocalizer. "...Yes. Yes, I would like that."

Megatron took him by the waist and swayed them back and forth. "I'm glad," he said softly, intimately, like all the street lights and passing vehicles behind them didn't exist. "I just thought that it would be nice for me to be able to see you every night and every morning. You've been coming over so often anyways. The time seemed right."

Orion leaned up and hushed him with a kiss. "When should I start moving my things?" He asked after they parted.

Now it was Megatron's turn to be mute. "Obviously not this evening but-- maybe tomorrow? Whenever it is you have time? I didn't really have a specific day in mind besides...as soon as you possibly could."

_ If this is how he asks me to move in with him, I wonder how he'll react when he sees the gift.  _ Orion laughed and hugged Megatron close. Then he leaned in and whispered, "Fly us home now, Megatron, so I can show you how happy I am you asked."

Megatron's hands spasmed a little. "Orion...?" His optics were bright when Orion pulled away with a grin. "Are you suggesting what I think...?"

"Yes," Orion said. It was easy to be bold when he could fluster Megatron so easily by being honest. "Take me home with you already."

"I'm going to drop you if you keep talking like that while I fly," Megatron said hoarsely.

Half an hour later, Orion was straddling Megatron’s lap as they both sat on the berth. He paused in kissing him to spread his fingers wide and slide his palms down Megatron’s chest, hungrily searching for access panels. The access panels on his wrists had snapped open sometime during their movement from the living area to the berthroom. He hadn’t been thinking about something as insignificant as time.

Megatron vented hard. “Just go slowly, Orion. I’m not sure I know what to do.”

“I don’t know what to do either,” Orion responded giddily. “But it doesn’t matter when it’s us.” He surged back in to take Megatron’s mouth, humming his delight as he mapped out his chest again. Two panels opened underneath his fingertips, and without conscious thought, he aligned his ports with Megatron’s and plugged in. It was strange, how both of their cables stirred to life and plugged into each other’s ports like they were magnetized, but then the data flow began and he didn’t have the attention to question it.

He barely kept himself in check to go slowly, as Megatron wished. The impulse to do so was tamped down even more when he felt Megatron’s mental presence inch tentatively onto his hardware. Orion hadn’t expected the level of uncertainty Megatron was currently feeling right now:  _ newness, fear-of-harming/being-harmed, is-this-okay Orion/lover/darling? _ Orion felt it all as if they were his own emotions. Foreign, yet natural.

_ Yes yes please, Megatron (my haven, my light). _ Orion’s excitement shot across their cables bright like a shower of sparks. He opened his sensory system and shoved the access permissions across the link.  _ Do whatever you want (You won’t ever hurt me) please please I want to feel more. _

Megatron’s arms wrapped around his lower back. The sensation was muted in comparison to the electrifying novelty of a mental touch.  _ Calming, Orion/love is here, all is well. _ Megatron’s thoughts smoothed like clay under a sculptor’s touch. Stray threads of nervousness were plucked from their tangles and sorted away:  _ not needed, no fear/not afraid. Only goodness/pleasure/joy now, for Orion/love. _

It was a wonder to see Megatron’s calm from the inside out. Orion marvelled at the neatness of his thoughts-- compared it to the flares and pops of his own emotions, a bubbling pot of  _ eager-desperate-longing, warmth-heat-searing Megatron please come to me I want you please come to me! _

Megatron’s lips grazed Optimus’ cheek, slid along in search until he found his lips. His thoughts, his  _ self _ tangled in Orion’s, smoothing his thoughts where they touched Megatron’s.  _ Peace/calm/at ease. I am here. _ He opened his sensory system to Orion.

Orion delved in instantly, feeling along the circuitry and feeding just enough charge to make Megatron shiver against him. He could  _ feel _ it travelling through Megatron’s body like it was an extension of his own. Curious, he felt along pathways until he reached Megatron’s wings, and stoked another, larger wave of charge.

The tingling across wings-that-were-his-yet-not had Orion arching in Megatron’s lap. His own processor couldn’t quite interpret the feeling of completely foreign components, so instead it concentrated the pleasure in the main area it registered: the plating all across his back and shoulders.

Megatron’s curiosity matched his hunger as he probed-- physically and mentally-- across Orion’s back. The first flash of charge was like the warning of lightning. Then the thunder came, a burst of charge across sensitive seams, and Orion cried out in pleasure.

The last of Megatron’s hesitance vanished. His thoughts tangled into Orion’s, hunger equal in heat as he started exploring Orion’s frame. He used his hands in sync with his mental probing, finding new sensitive spots on Orion’s body or stimulating places he had already found.

Orion barely had the processor space to mourn the fact that his hands were so limited by the plugs connecting him to Megatron. He focused instead on gifting charge in equal measure as Megatron, using boldness as his instrument. Reciprocated pleasure bounced and echoed back and forth between them, blurring the line between one mind, one frame, and the other.

_ Yes more, there-- I want it/you can have it-- Orion/Megatron/lover, nothing-this-good-ever. Not afraid, never afraid again. Touch me like that again. _

Pleasure arcing, synchronizing. Engines roaring, soaring higher. The approach.

_ Never before-- oh please, more, more! Love, my love-- yes, you’re mine I’m yours-- so good, so good, good, wonderful, please-- So close, yes! Together-- deeper into me, make mine/yours/ours. Love, love, I love you. I love you! _

They clung to each other as they overloaded, frames going rigid and lips stilling as electricity swept through their circuitry. Soaring so high, high, and then it simmered downwards, a glide back to the earth. Both of them sighed and sagged against each other. The impact of hitting soft berth covers was felt by both frames.

Still beyond words, Orion’s first threads of thought emerged.  _ Love, love, warmth-comfort-satisfaction-solace. Perfection. _

Megatron answered.  _ Love, yes, Orion. Incredible, incomparable. Kiss me? _

A tremble of limbs.  _ Too tired, not yet. Can’t move. _ A laugh that began with Orion spread to Megatron.

_ Then wait, love. No hurry, no need. Soft, relax, enjoy. _

Even when the last fizz of charge dissipated and their cables automatically disengaged, neither one moved. Megatron and Orion dozed, then fell into true sleep, still entangled.

  
  


_ Torn . . . _

_. . . . . . . . . _

_ A spark. . . _

_ Fades. . . into rust. _

  
  
  


It took almost two decades after their first transmission for the neutral settlements to start responding to the transmissions. On his days off, Orion sometimes joined Megatron in the city hall as he reviewed de-encrypted text transmissions or sent a video response to another colony. Apparently, nearly every neutral colony was deep in hiding and had cut off all contact with other Cybertronians during the war. On top of that, many of them didn't even have the infrastructure for more than the most rudimentary forms of long-range communication. It made checking in on every surviving colony more difficult, and keeping all of them up to date with the current state of Cybertron even more so.

Orion was content to watch Megatron and other former members of High Command-- Prowl and Soundwave among them-- deal with the logistical and political issues. One day, after an hour or two of admiring how Megatron stayed calm through difficulty after difficulty, Orion finally admitted to himself that he was bored of watching. He waved silently to Megatron before he left. Megatron gave him a quick smile before returning to his work.

This day was not one for recreation. Even years later, the wall-breaking revelation he had had in Megatron's berth lingered in his mind-- along with the sporadic, but persistent nightmares. Orion was making a pilgrimage of sorts today. 

The construction of a war memorial had been completed a short while ago, and Orion had finally spared the time from work to visit it.

For a monument dedicated to millions of years of war felt by two universes, the memorial was surprisingly...humble, though the more Orion looked at it, the more he felt that anything grandiose or elaborate simply wouldn't have been fitting. It was a huge plaza large enough that it could have fit most of the combined Autobot-Decepticon armies standing shoulder to shoulder. The pavement was made of geometric shapes, but all cut from the same plain brown stone, and so too were the benches. The plaza was broken by stone walls whose heights varied from low enough for Orion to sit on, to at least twice his height. Some of the higher walls resembled a maze, or even bars of some sort of cage, when Orion walked between them at the right angle. Flashes of light from glass and metal decorations shone at irregular intervals. Orion passed by a sculpture with a plaque under it:

_ "Melted down and reshaped from my amica's old sword. Across the galaxy and for millions of years, from even beyond death, you have protected me, and now I lay you to rest. I miss you, T.E." _

Sometimes Orion passed other visitors. When they acknowledged each other, it was only with a silent nod. There was no sound except for their engines, footsteps, and ambient noise from the surrounding city.

Something shook loose from inside Orion's chest and floated to the surface: sorrow, remembrance, guilt. Like he had felt that night in Megatron's room, but more calm-- not because the depth of his feeling was any lesser, but because seeing the various tributes that other Cybertronians had placed here made him feel... like he didn't need to hold anything inside himself any more. Other people had managed to put into form what he had felt, and there was a companionship in that which transcended physical place and time.

He was staring at a mural of black flames that spanned an entire section of a wall when he heard footsteps approach. Orion saw the telltale flame-like colors out of the corner of his vision, and then he turned and saw the rest of Hot Rod as he stopped a respectful distance away. Orion acknowledged him with a nod.

"Hey," Hot Rod began. He looked at the flame mural on the wall, then lowered his gaze and stared at his shuffling feet. "So, what do you think?"

Orion looked between the mech and the mural. "It's yours?"

"Yeah." Hot Rod's voice crackled at the edges.

"Nyon?"

"Yeah..." The crackle intensified, and made his voice almost illegible. He shook his head rapidly and then revved his engines a few times. "Yeah, I painted that. I got some help from Sunstreaker, but...yeah. That's why the architects built this place the way it is: it's so we can all decorate it however we want to. However it feels right, I guess."

Orion had never had much of an eye for aesthetics or art critique, but he did share enough history with Hot Rod that he knew that wasn't what he was asking for. "It's a fitting tribute." 

In unspoken agreement, they started walking together. The complicated knot in Orion's chest twisted uneasily. Another crack in the wall.

And behind that, a slow glimmer of awareness from the Matrix.

"Hot Rod," Orion said. "You remember what I told you back then about making hard decisions?"

His companion looked at him keenly, frowning. "I remember."

Orion stopped walking and put his arms behind his back, and Hot Rod copied him after a moment.

"It doesn't get easier to bear just because you know you had to do it," Orion said at last. "Maybe it never gets easier-- I don't know. I don't know, but I think we have to find our own paths to mourn. I hope that your mural helped make that path clearer to you."

Hot Rod's arms stiffened, and he lowered his head again. "Just a sec," he garbled, and darted out of sight behind the nearest stone wall.

Orion let him have his space. For himself, he just offlined his optics and tilted his face up to the sun. Grief, he decided, was like rust: scraping it away hurt like nothing else, but in the end, finding the living, healthy metal underneath was worth the pain.

He stood alone for several minutes longer before Hot Rod emerged. "Sorry about that," he said, still sounding a bit unsteady, but mostly back to his normal high energy. "Anyways... If you don't mind me asking, do you want to add something yourself? I know a few places that don't have any decorations on them yet."

"I've never been an artist." He thought of the gift he was building for Megatron and added, "Nothing that would be fitting for here, anyways."

"No, it's not like that," Hot Rod said, emphasizing with a gesture and a shake of his head. "It's not about how talented you are or how pretty you can make it. You've just gotta make something from your spark. Look."

Hot Rod led them at a fast walk through the stone walls until they reached a certain section full of graffiti. The writing was plain or fanciful, jagged or neat, monochrome or colored: names, sentences, lines of poetry.

"See?" Hot Rod said. "I've been hanging around here for a long time, now. Some people keep their stuff fresh all the time, but sometimes they just let it fade and someone else paints on top of it. I remember when  _ this _ was just one line..." He swept his palm over a block of poetry that stretched from his waist to his knee. "Whoever this was, it took them a couple of months to write the entire thing out."

Orion kneeled to read it more closely.

"I just think you should try it," Hot Rod finished hesitantly. "Paths of mourning and all that. You used to give good speeches-- maybe you can think of something, even if you don’t write it today."

"Maybe it will be today," Orion said slowly. The glimmer from the Matrix was like a fresh shot of energon in his tanks. He felt a sudden sense of premonition; whether it was because the Matrix was telling him something, or because it was giving him the clarity to finally verbalize what he was feeling, he couldn't say. "Do you have something to write with?"

He stood up and took the tube that Hot Rod offered him. He tested it on the heel of his hand, and the paint came out in a solid black streak. "Thank you," he told his companion, then faced the clear section of the wall, writing in straight, painstaking strokes. The lines came out a little crooked, and his handwriting wasn't anything special, but when he finished he stepped back with lightness in his spark as he read the words:

_ “THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT LISTEN TO OUR CRIES OF LAMENT.” _

"Huh," Hot Rod said, sounding equal parts impressed and confused. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know." The more Orion looked at the words, the less he understood them, actually. The sentiment behind them was so...hopeless. He had despaired many times during the long war, but he had never even  _ thought  _ anything so bitter as this. Maybe it sounded a little familiar, ticking some obscure memory file, but... 

Both the Matrix’s energy and his sudden clarity faded away as abruptly as they had come. Orion was a little tempted to erase the words, but they looked right at home in the company of the other scrawled messages. "It came from the spark, just like you said."

  
  
  


The day came where they had finally received responses from enough neutrals that a meeting was arranged for all living Cybertronians to participate in forming the new government. Orion accompanied Megatron to the city hall on the momentous day.

An amphitheater had been built inside of the hall as its great centerpiece, where the government would meet once its members were present in person. The many tiers of seats reminded Orion of one he had stood in many millions of years ago-- though now he sat among the spectators rather than standing alone on the speaking floor. The entire half of the amphitheater opposite him was occupied by huge floating holo-screens, all of which were offline with standby messages flashing on the otherwise inert screens. Little drones hovered in neat rows near the ceiling; not only would they be providing microphones and video for the mechs present, but they would also be recording the meeting so that citizens who had chosen to stay at home or at work could view the election.

Once Orion claimed a seat, Megatron bumped their helms together and gave him a reassuring hum, then left to join the preparations taking place at the ground level. Orion saw him join Starscream and Soundwave supervising a group of technicians.

Orion's vision began to fuzz after a few moments of watching the group of mechs flit around. He offlined his optics and held his face in his hands.  _ Of all days to not get enough recharge... _

The ripple of an approaching energy field, then a hand resting on his shoulder dragged Orion from his stupor. "Hello...?" He asked, slowly dragging his hands down his face. "Oh. Hello, Jazz."

"Afternoon, O.P.," Jazz answered casually. "You look a little under the weather today, anything up?"

"No, no. I just didn't recharge well last night, is all. I'm just tired." Being addressed in so casual of a way helped Orion's spark settle a little bit. It was so strange not being addressed as "Prime” and having his own soldier-- former soldier-- asking after his well-being, but it was also liberating. Orion sat up straighter in his seat. "And you, Jazz? We haven't spoken in a long while."

Jazz shrugged. "Same old, same old. Just wanted to come here to get my first look at the neutrals. I guess you could say I want to scope out my future neighbors."

"Ah. I just felt that I should participate in my civic duty, as it were. And of course to offer my support however I may."

"Support." Jazz drawled. He winked behind his visor. "About that... Conjunx life treating you as well as usual, I assume?"

"Oh no, we're not conjunxes." Orion lowered his voice. "Not yet. I'm still working on working on my gift for him."

"The two of you definitely made a pretty picture on that announcement," Jazz chuckled. "Orion Pax and Megatron. Can't say I ever expected to see that happen."

"Ah, well. Life is full of surprises." Orion rubbed the back of his helm. "You've just reminded me of something. If you don't mind, I'd like to walk around and see if there's anyone else from the Autobots who might be open to conversation. Thank you for checking in on me," he added politely.

Jazz waved him off good-naturedly. Orion picked his way across the theater, avoiding the clusters of mechs standing in aisles where he could, until he spotted a familiar yellow frame in the crowd.

"Good afternoon, Bumblebee," he said after getting the mech's attention. "I take it you're interested in seeing our new government form?"

"Yes, Pri-- Orion," Bumblebee corrected himself quickly. He looked around self-consciously and then straightened, setting his shoulders back. "In fact... I was thinking of trying to get a position myself. I have a speech, and a few people watching me back home."

"That's a noble ambition, Bumblebee. I wish you success." Orion reached out, and after a moment, Bumblebee grasped his hand.

"I just don't know if I have a chance... I mean, there are probably some neutrals out there that were actually politicians or lawyers before the war that are way more qualified than I am. Wait a minute..." Bumblebee frowned up at him. "Aren't you going to run for a position as well?"

Orion grinned dryly behind his mask. "No, old friend. I've had enough of leadership for multiple lifetimes. I'm quite content with my work at the archives these days."

"Oh. Well... You would know what's best for yourself." Bumblebee looked Orion up and down, as if seeing him with fresh optics. "Thank you for your support, Orion. If you think I can do this... well, I do feel better than I did before."

"Any time," Orion reassured him.

The bustle on the floor of the amphitheater was calming down in a way that could only mean that the meeting was about to begin. Orion made his way back to his reserved seat preemptively, claiming it before the real rush of mechs taking seats began. Orion had eyes only for Megatron, who was standing in the center of the floor. Starscream and Soundwave stood with him, and they all exchanged a few final encouragements-- Soundwave patting Megatron's shoulder, Starscream gesturing and smiling enthusiastically-- before they left Megatron standing on the floor.

The noise in the theater slowly died away. Orion leaned forward.

The visual feeds flickered into life one by one, presenting the faces of many unfamiliar mechs, sometimes multiple per screen. Orion knew that each screen represented one colony or settlement of neutrals, and to see so many was heartening. As more screens turned on, a lone whoop arose from the crowd, and in a quick simmer everyone in the amphitheater began to cheer. Orion joined in with the noise making by clapping his hands; he was practically vibrating in his seat. So many new faces. So many Cybertronians that would be welcomed home.

Orion couldn't see Megatron's face, but his winged angled a little higher as the final screens turned on and the cheers of the crowd died down.

"Honorable kindred. Welcome to the first meeting of Cybertron's new government. In the spirit of freedom and independence, I called this meeting to invite as many of us as possible to have a choice in our planet's future leadership. We have been separated for long enough, so let us begin without preamble." Megatron raised his arms. "I open the floor to anyone who wishes to nominate themselves or another mech to a governmental position."

The proceedings were quite dry for a while after that. A position would be announced, and then the floor was opened for mechs to nominate themselves or others to the seat. Then there would be the speeches where the candidates themselves would argue their credentials, and often other mechs would testify on their behalf. Orion noted that some positions seemed to be more contentious, while others were ceded more or less immediately to the mech who made the most immediate nomination... particularly when said mech was a former soldier, and especially so when they were a Decepticon. Bumblebee lost to a Decepticon Orion wasn't familiar with, and Prowl barely snagged the nomination for the chair of utilities and infrastructure after an extensive debate and a testimony by Orion himself.

The neutrals were almost...reverent towards the Decepticons. For a moment, Orion entertained regretful thoughts of how different it was in his home universe: how neutral refugees from Cybertron like Dai Atlas saw his Autobots as equal warmongers to the Decepticons. Then he wondered what it said about this universe's Autobots that the Decepticons seemed to be treated as complete war heroes for being the ones to stop them, no matter the methods.

Orion shivered and folded his arms over his chest. No, best not to think of that right now.

After two more hours, all of the positions had been settled except for one.

Then, blinking slightly, one of the screens moved to the forefront: Dai Atlas. He crossed his arms and said sternly, "Megatron employed both martial and scientific finesse in fighting the Autobots and sending them from this universe. I nominate him as the High Ruler of Cybertron."

No one spoke. The various neutral representatives ranged from thoughtful to excited. Many of the mechs assembled in the amphitheater talked in hushed voices amongst themselves.

Orion looked at Megatron, who after a moment of being still, slowly turned his helm. Their optics met.

[What do you think, Orion?] Came Megatron's comm.

Orion shifted in his seat. [I've never been one for politics, and I don't envy your position as leader. You understand these neutrals' history and mindsets better than I. Do what you think is best.] After a moment, he hastily added, [But if you don't want the position, then you should refuse it before you are put under leadership again.]

It could have been a trick of Orion's optics, or the light, that made him see Megatron's smile at this distance. [That was also a question of your comfort. If I become the High Ruler, that would change our relationship quite substantially. Things like where we live and how much time we spend together. The amount of public attention.]

The conversation of the mechs around him was starting to settle, and the neutrals seemed to be coming to a close in their off-screen discussions as well. [We'll just have to find out, won't we? I don't want to be a roadblock to whatever you think is best for yourself or Cybertron. Just don't ask me to attend any state functions. There's a reason I refused to run for even a low-level position.]

Megatron didn't answer him with another comm, but Orion could imagine the thoughtful hum he was making as clearly as if Megatron were sitting right next to him.

"On behalf of my colony, I also second the nomination of Megatron to the position of High Ruler," said a mech on one of the holo-screens.

One by one, every neutral representative present agreed to the nomination. Some simply made their statements with no additional commentary, while others cited specific events or waxed eloquent about some achievement or battle the Decepticons had won during the war. Orion recognized some of them from archived data files, but the exact details were beyond his recollection. It was heartening to see so many people looking at Megatron as a hero, a protector.

Megatron had been the informal proctor of the entire thing, so in his stead the clusters of drones focused on Soundwave. "Other nominations: step forth?"

No one did, either to nominate themselves or another. Orion nonetheless felt like there was a slight ripple of attention towards his area of the amphitheater. It might have just been his imagination.

Megatron folded his arms behind his back again and stood straighter. "I accept your nominations gratefully and humbly. May the times ahead of us be safer and more prosperous than those behind us."

"All hail Megatron, High Ruler of Cybertron," Dai Atlas intoned.

Applause broke in the stadium and in the holo-screens. "All hail Megatron! All hail Megatron!"

The chorus of cheers reverberated throughout the amphitheater. The noise felt like it was buzzing into Orion's helm, and he dropped his face into his hands. The lack of recharge, the suddenness of Megatron's ascension... he was definitely going to have a terrible headache for the rest of the day.

The meeting concluded with a summary of the new leadership, another speech from Megatron, and formal goodbyes from each of the representatives present. The moment the final holo-screen shut down, the room was instantly full of the sound of mechs standing from their seats and walking around, finding this or that group of friends or leaving immediately to go back home, talking animatedly among themselves the entire time.

Orion cut his way through the crowd, urgency asserting itself over politeness as he took advantage of his height to make his own path. When he got to the railing at the bottom row, he put one foot on and then jumped over, landing with a smooth roll on the floor below. Those movements were still engraved in his instincts. He sorted the thought away as he ignored the approach of Soundwave and Starscream to run into Megatron's arms.

"How are you?" Orion blurted out at the exact same time Megatron did. They both chuckled, and Orion dropped his forehead on Megatron's shoulder in a moment of embarrassment before looking back up and saying, "No, really, you first. How are you? Were you expecting to be nominated like that? What are you thinking about right now?"

"I'm quite fine," Megatron answered, running his palms down Orion's back in soothing strokes. "I had calculated the nomination as a possibility, but I can't say that I predicted with certainty that it would happen. As for what I'm thinking about..." He tweaked one of Orion's finials lightly. "The labor of life continues no matter what form it takes. I'm sure being High Ruler will be challenging, but I will manage as I always have. What do you think about it?"

Orion could sense Soundwave and Starscream waiting a polite distance away, as well as the crowd with heavy optics on the two of them, but he didn't let that stop him from pulling Megatron even closer. "I'm just glad you're happy with it. Stars know I don't envy your position. But... it may be a challenge for me to cope with so many others demanding your attention."

"You know I'll always make room for you, love."

"Mmmhm." Orion bumped their foreheads together. "I'll let you handle the crowds, then. When do you think you'll be home tonight?"

Megatron looked a touch guilty. "Later than normal, I would guess."

"Don't worry about it. I'm probably going to be in recharge before I get too lonely."

Megatron's hands lingered on Orion's plating for as long as possible when he stepped away. "Then sleep fast and sleep well, Orion."

  
  
  


The neutrals returned in a trickle that soon became a steady stream. The days where Orion had free time to retreat to his office and tinker with Megatron's gift became a rarity. Not only did he have to continue his work of archiving old knowledge, but he had to keep up with the task of actually maintaining the archive as mechs perused it day in and day out. The sheer amount of effort it took merely to maintain a schedule of which mechs he was meeting with, when, and for how long, and which sections of the archives he would need to update once he downloaded their knowledge into the relevant terminals was enough to make Orion's processor ache. 

He didn't even have much free time to spend with Megatron any more... though his lover was also extremely busy with his own work being the High Ruler. Orion knew that Megatron had other obligations, and he had been on his own for the rest of his life anyways. He managed through the evenings where Megatron didn’t return until Orion was asleep by immersing himself in work.

Work was a good distraction from his nightmares, which continued to plague him at semi-regular intervals. Megatron kept reminding him to see if he could find a therapist among the returning neutrals, but Orion simply forgot to. Or he was too busy. Whenever he slept uneasily, he often simply got up and left for the archives early rather than spend the remaining hours until dawn trying to fall back asleep.

"Don't overwork yourself, love," Megatron mumbled drowsily one morning. He was writing on the screen in the living room when Orion emerged from their berthroom. Orion mumbled assent. His mind was still full of dreams of forked paths and lightning.

Then, just as Orion palmed the door of their apartment open, Megatron was suddenly behind Orion, catching him by the waist. "Seriously. I mean it."

"I won't. Besides, the work helps with the nightmares."

"Promise?"

"I promise. You should go to recharge yourself, Megatron."

Megatron purred his engines, sending an enticing vibration across Orion's back. "Okay," he conceded finally. He planted a kiss on one of Orion's finials. "Have a nice day. Be sure to refuel on time."

Despite everything, Orion enjoyed the drive to the archives. He was still a little bleary, but the solitude and quietness of the city roads at this hour of the morning was worth the trouble. The dark sky and its stars soothed the turbulence in his spark by the time he arrived at the archives, padded into his office, and started working on Megatron's gift again.

If he kept up his progress, he might be able to finish it by the time their third centennial arrived.

  
  
  


_. . . millions of years . . . _

_. . . _

_. . . _

_ Death and death and death _

_. . . _

_. . . _

_. . . _

_ The universe does not listen _

_ to our cries of lament. _

_. . . _

_. . . _

_ They fell… _

_ They fell…  _

_ They fell… _

_. . . . . . _

_. . .  _

_. . . I could have saved their sparks. _

_. . . I never will. _

  
  
  


Orion jolted awake with a gasp. His entire body was as hot as if he had raced a dozen laps around Iacon, and when he slapped a hand to his face, it came away smeared with pink energon.

"Oh," He breathed. "Oh. No, no."

Megatron sat upright next to him and hugged him. "No?" He queried.

Orion shook his helm. "It was just a nightmare. The war... nothing new." He took a cleaning cloth from the nightstand-- one he kept prepared for these occasions-- and wiped his face off.

Everything had just been flashes of sight and sound, but their meaning was engraved in his spark.  _ They died because of my mistakes. _ He remembered cradling a body in his arms and weeping. Looking over tactical plans and sitting alone at the command table long after everyone else had left. Wondering if the lives he had just approved to die in a sacrificial diversion strategy would make a difference in the war. Or perhaps they would simply be cast into the bottomless well like every other life had been, eventually forgotten under the relentless press of time.

He felt Megatron's lips press to his helm. "Everything is well with the world right now, and that's what matters." His energy field settled over Orion's like a warm blanket. Orion followed that comforting weight and settled back down onto the berth next to him.

"Don't you ever get tired of comforting me all the time?" Orion whispered, crackling.

"No." Megatron's whisper was firm, resolute. "Why would I? I want you-- all of you, even your sorrow."

Orion considered this for a while. At last, he brushed down the troubled waves of his spark and sighed. "Megatron?"

One blue optic onlined slowly. "Yes?"

Orion scooted closer. "Thank you for always being here for me." He paused to look deeply into Megatron's optics. "I love you."

Megatron's other optic onlined. "I love you too, Orion."

They pressed their foreheads together. A few moments later, the light from their optics winked out.

"I think everything will be okay... one day," Orion whispered, trailing off into silence.


End file.
